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ADDRESSES 



OF THE 



NEWLY-APPOINTED PPvOFESSORS 



OF 



COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 



WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 



BY WILLIAM BETTS, LL.D. 



FEBRUAEIY, 1858. 



NEW YOEK: 
BY AUTHOPaXY OF THE TRUSTEES. 

1858. 



^^^ 



HHi 



v.^ 






WYNKOOP, HALLENBECK & THOMAS, Peisters 
No.. 113 Fulton street, New York. 



RESOLUTIONS OF THE TRUSTEES. 



At a meeting of the Trustees of Columbia College, held on the 22d of 
June, 1S57: 

Resolved, That it be referred to a committee of three, of which the Presi- 
dent shall be Chairman, to make such arrangements as they may deem expedi- 
ent in reference to the inauguration of the newly-appointed Professors at the 
opening of the next College Course. 

The President, the Rev. Dr. Spring, and the Rev. Dr. Haight were 
appointed the Committee. 

Mr. Jones and Mr. Zabriskie were subsequently added to the Com- 
mittee. 



On the 17th September, 1857, the Committee made a Report, and it 
was 

Resolved, That the Chairman of the Conmaittee on the Course be requested 
to prepare the address of the Trustees, mentioned therein. 

At a meeting of the Trustees of the College, held on the 1st of March, 

1858, it was 

Resolved, That the Chairman of the Committee on the Course, and the 
several Professors, be requested to furnish copies of the addresses lately 
delivered by them, and that the same be printed and published under the 
direction of the Committee. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS, ^""^^ 

William Betts, LL. D., I 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 

Charles A. Joy, Ph. D., 29 

INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 

Francis Lieber, LL. D., . . . . . . . 55 

INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 

Charles Davles, LL. P., 117 

INAUGURAL DISCOURSE, 

Charles Murray Nairne, M. A., 15o 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS 

AT THE 

I:^rJ^TJ&UR^TIO]s^ 

OF THE 

|t. du I a - ^- )J )} i It 1 1 i I r f i: s s a r s 

OF 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 

BY WILLIAM LETTS, LL. D., 

February, 1858. 



INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 



Befoee the several professors, who have lately 
assumed chairs of instruction in Columbia College, 
shall address themselves to you, the Trustees have 
thought it fitting, on theu' own behalf, to offer a 
few preliminary remarks. The principal object of 
our meeting at this time is, the introduction to the 
public of those learned gentlemen. On ordinary 
occasions, this introduction is made by means of an 
Inaugural Discourse, delivered by the incumbent, on 
commencing the functions of his office ; and it seldom 
happens that more than a single individual, at any 
one time, is called upon to perform the duty. We 
have now, however, to celebrate no common inaugu- 
ration. Several individuals are about to lay before 
you their views and the objects of their teaching in 
the various departments committed to them ; and 
this, under circumstances of deep interest, and pecu- 
liar importance. The rapid progress of events, for a 
few past years, has operated powerfully upon the 
College, and wrought a mighty change in its pros- 
pects and designs. Those events have pushed from 



its foundations tlie old fabric of tlie College, and 
swept away every trace of its material existence. 
This revolution was attended witli adequate compen- 
sation. An accession to its means came witli its 
change of position ; and that brought with it an 
accession of responsibility. This is not just the time 
to enlarge on the character of that responsibility, or 
of the mode in which it affected the minds of the 
Trustees. It is enough, at this moment, to say, that 
they felt it, and they acted upon it ; they wish that 
the Public should know that they did feel it, and that 
they did act upon it ; and, with this view, they have 
directed, in connection with the present celebration, 
to use their own words, " An Addi^ess to be pre- 
pared from the Trustees, setting forth, clearly and 
fully, the history of the recent changes in and 
enlargement of the course of studies ; and theu" pur- 
poses and hopes in regard to their futm-e operations." 
The Trustees having thought fit to select one of their 
own number for the performance of that duty ; and 
having committed it to him who now speaks to 
you, he will proceed to discharge it, with as much 
brevity as is consistent with its faithful perform- 
ance. 

The prominent object before the Public, undoubt- 
edly, is the removal of the College, and its position 
in its present locality. The considerations and motives 



which preceded that removal, the hopes which at- 
tend, and the completed designs which may follow it, 
are not so apparent to them ; and, in making a sketch 
of the late changes, it may not be unfitting to refer 
briefly to the recent removal of the Institution from 
its former grounds. 

Undoubtedly this removal is attended with painfal 
recollections, as well as pleasing anticipations. At 
the time the old building was erected, one hundred 
years ago, it stood in the midst of pleasant fields, on 
the banks of the lordly Hudson. Tranquillity and 
silence were around it. The groves of the Academy 
were removed from the strife of trade, and the tu- 
mult of the forum ; the life of contemplation was not 
brought breast to breast with the life of action, but 
each pursued, apart, its own appropriate course : and 
the students, while they daily, in their silken gowns 
and tasselled caps, proceeded to the isolated halls of 
their venerated mother, felt themselves a distinct and 
peculiar class. The conviction rested upon them, 
although it might find no definite embodiment either 
in idea or expression, that theii* quiet and modest 
occupation was one of high import ; that their daily 
intercourse with the spirits of the great men, whose 
intellect had illuminated the world, was fitting them 
for high intercom'se thereafter ; and that they were 



4 ME. BETTS ADDEESS. 

becoming qualified to be the leaders and benefactors 
of mankind. 

The progress of trade soon filled those fields with 
habitations, and removed from the shore of the Col- 
lege lawn the ripples of the gentle river. The 
Academic caps disappeared from the brows of the 
youthful wearers; and houses, and ware-rooms, and 
streets crowded around, and stretched onwards, and 
pressed upon the College precincts, until the voice of 
learning was almost stified by the clamor of business ; 
its atmosphere mingled with the atmosphere of trade; 
its objects began to be regarded as of secondary im- 
port ; and the halls of study lost that calm repose, 
without which study can never be profitably pro- 
secuted. 

Although, for some years before the removal took 
place, it became evident that it must occur at no dis- 
tant period, its actual removal was yet made sooner 
than it was expected. The opening of a new street, 
directly in front of the building, taking from it all 
retirement and privacy, and the current of trade, 
which poured steadily just in that dii'ection, forced it 
to retreat. The old recollections which clustered 
around it, of early friendships, and joyous sports, and 
youthful aspirations, were banished with regret ; the 
old associations connected with the halls, and the Lec- 
ture rooms, and the honored faculty, and even the 



MR. BETTS' ADDRESS. 



neglected discipline, with pain were broken. It was 
painful, but it was proper ; and tlie Grovernment of 
tlie College did not hesitate to do it. They had not 
waited for the last moment, but had already taken 
such measm^es as were fitting for the occasion ; and 
when the event took place, they were, so far as it was 
in their power to be so, prepared for it. It was an- 
ticipated that the same circumstances which com- 
pelled the removal of the College would eventually 
enlarge its income. It could not be known when, or 
to what extent, this enlargement would take place ; 
nor what amount of expenditures might become need- 
ful ; but it was plain that, after all expenditures, there 
would yet be an accession to its means. The College 
felt that it was incumbent on it to improve, if pos- 
sible, the quality of its usefulness, and certainly its 
quantity ; and it took timely measures to provide for 
every possible contingency. 

The property of the College, it is generally known, 
is composed of the noble donation, by Trinity Church, 
of the tract on which the fabric lately stood ; and of 
another tract of land, the gift of the State, formerly 
known as the Botanic Garden, near the position of 
the present College. 

The first grant was made " to aid in founding, erect- 
ing and establishing a college, and promoting the 
education of youth in the liberal arts and sciences ;' 



and was upon the condition tliat the President should 
be in communion with the English Church, and that 
certain prayers should be used in the daily service of 
the chapel. This grant forms the principal part of 
the active property of the College. Large sums have 
lately been received from the sale of a portion of the 
property. A considerable amount of the avails of 
those sales is required for adequately establishing the 
institution in the upper part of the city, and for put- 
ting the State grant in a condition to produce a reve- 
nue. The accommodations now in use for instruction 
are intended to be temporary. The outlay made in 
preparing them for use has much exceeded what was 
intended ; a heavy expenditm^e has been incurred in 
regulating the Botanic Grarden, from which an essen- 
tial part of the future revenue of the College is ex- 
pected to be derived ; this expenditure has absorbed 
large sums received from the sales of the real estate ; 
and great prudence and economy are necessary to 
secure the advantages of education, at which the Trus- 
tees most anxiously are aiming. These observations, 
respecting the means of the College, are not precisely 
in the chronological order in which they should be in 
relation to the changes made ; but, inasmuch as they 
form the basis upon which the other measures are to 
be constructed, they are here introduced, that the con- 
nection of its action, on those measures^ may not be 



MR. BETTS' ADDRESS. 7 

broken. You will observe, therefore, that when tlie 
Trustees of tbe College began to move in this matter, 
they knew that very large expenses must be incurred 
both in the construction of the buildings and in the 
regulation of the State grounds ; they knew that the 
expenses of regulating the land would eventually be 
paid by the land itself; but they did not know when 
they might expect revenue from it ; they did not know 
how much the portion of the church property to be 
sold would produce ; they knew that, upon the whole, 
there would be an increase of revenue, but they could 
not anticipate its amount, or the time at which it 
would take place ; and therefore it became material 
that any plan of enlarged operations should admit of 
expansion in proportion to the means to be acquired. 
Actuated by these considerations, the Trustees, on 
the third day of October, 1853, appointed a commit- 
tee, who were instructed " to inquire whether it was 
expedient to take any and what measures, for the 
removal of the College ; and, in the event of such 
removal, whether any and what changes ought to be 
made in the under-graduate course ; and whether it 
would be expedient to establish a system of univers- 
ity education, in addition to such under-graduate 
course, either in continuation thereof or otherwise ; 
and that they should report fully as to the principles 
and details of any plan that they might recommend ; 



8 ME. BETTS' ADDEESS. 

and whether, in their opinion, it could "be successfully 
carried into execution ; and in connection therewith, 
that they consider whether, for the more effectual 
carrying out such plan, and extending the benefits of 
the institution, it ought to afford rooms and com- 
mons, or rooms alone for resident students, or ought 
to have its seat isolated." 

These instructions, it may be observed, covered the 
whole subject of the higher branches of learning ; 
and, by directing the principles of any plan to be 
detailed, it necessarily oj)ened an inquiry into the 
objects and ends of a thorough education, as well as 
the best means of attaining those objects and ends. 
The Committee entered upon their duties with 
promptness ; and at the next meeting of the Board of 
Trustees, in November, 1853, they made a prelimi- 
nary report, in which they stated, as the ground- 
work of their future proceedings, their conviction, 
that the proper business of g, College education was 
the cultivation of the human intellect in all its parts 
and functions, with a view to a full development of 
the mental and moral qualities : generally, to form 
and give direction to the mind, without reference 
rto any specific future employment. 

The Committee knew that this view did not com- 
mand popular sympathy. They knew that the pub- 
lic generally, unaccustomed to look upon the mind 



ME. BETTS' ADDRESS. 



except in connection with tlie body, and to regard 
it as a macliine for promoting tlie pleasures, the con- 
veniences, or the comforts of the latter, might be 
dissatisfied with a system of education in which they 
were unable to perceive the direct connection be- 
tween the knowledge imparted and the advantages 
to be gained. They hoped that some means might 
be devised for satisfying, in some measure, this de- 
mand ; but, in seeking this object, they were admon- 
ished, by experience, authority and reason, not to 
diminish, in the slightest degree, the high value which 
was placed on the right acquisition of the Greek and 
Latin Classics. With respect to the establishment 
of a post-graduate university system in addition to 
the under-graduate course, they were not prepared to 
say more, than that they regarded it favorably in 
those respects in which it might be practicable : but 
that the design was not free from serious difficulties ; 
that the subject had occupied the minds of learned 
men in connection with the English Universities, but 
hitherto without eifect ; that the Medical and Theo- 
logical Schools had done much, perhaps all that could 
at present be done in that direction ; but in regard 
to higher jurisprudence, and the sciences and their 
applications, much might possibly be done by the 
College. 

The Committee likewise recommended the imme 



10 



diate removal of tlie College ; but, althougli exertions 
were made to attain that object, they were fortunate- 
ly, as subsequent events proved, unsuccessful. 

The general principle of Collegiate Education hav- 
ing been thus briefly, but decidedly exhibited to the 
Board of Trustees, and no dissenting opinion having 
been expressed, it became proper to invoke the ad- 
vice of the several members of the Faculty, whose 
acquirements and experience peculiarly qualified them 
to afford aid at this juncture ; and without whose 
harmonious co-operation with the Trustees no success 
could be expected in the proposed operations. Most 
of the Faculty gave written responses to the inqui- 
ries addressed to them ; and it was satisfactory and 
gratifying that their concurrence with the views of 
the Committee, as to the fundamental principles and 
true ends of education, was entirely unanimous. 

The answers of the Faculty to the inquiries made 
had not, however, been immediate ; and, in the mean- 
while, a full report was made to the Board of Trus- 
tees, by the same Committee, on the 24th of July, 
1854, comprehending all the subjects which had been 
referred to them, and reporting fully the principles 
which had guided them in the adoption of the plan 
recommended. That plan, as eventually modified, 
will soon be explained. It was contained in a sylla- 
bus or outline of a statute ; and, as the revenues of 



MR. BETTS' ADDEESS. 11 

the College were not then in a condition to authorize 
an immediate expansion, an opportunity was allowed 
for examination and criticism, and for receiving from 
the Faculty the mature results of their reflections. 
The answers of several of the Faculty having been 
at length received, and the Board of Trustees having 
had a full opportunity for deliberation, the Com- 
mittee, on the 4th of June, 1855, again brought the 
subject before the Trustees, and professed themselves 
ready to report a statute, at any time that the Board 
might desire, and be prepared to receive it. 

On the 12th of January, 1857, the time had ar- 
rived, when from the necessity of removal, and the 
probability of an augmented revenue, the Board of 
Trustees were prepared for action ; and accordingly, 
on that day, they directed the Committee on the 
course, " to bring in the full statute to comprehend 
the whole scheme of College and University instruc- 
tion contemplated by their former report." 

The requisition was j)i'omptly obeyed, and the full 
statute prepared and reported on the second day of 
March. In the brief interval, the site on which the 
old College stood had been sold, and the removal of 
the institution was to take place in May. 

For two or three years preceding this period, ar- 
rangements had been going on for the erection of 
proper and permanent buildings on the Botanic Gar- 



12 ME. BETTS' ADDRESS. 

den grounds ; but tlie uncertainty attending tlie event- 
ual arrangement of tliose grounds, and other circum- 
stances wliicli could not be controlled, suspended tlie 
prosecution of the design. A variety of proposals 
had from time to time been made for removal to 
temporary buildings ; but the transfer of a large insti- 
tution, with its library, apparatus, and necessary para- 
phernalia, was no easy matter. This subject might 
have created a serious embarrassment, had not the 
offer of the buildings, formeiiy occupied by the Deaf 
and Dumb Institution, provided a mode of accommo- 
dation, which promised to be both efficacious and 
economical. 

The Trustees now set about effecting their purpose 
in earnest. By the month of July the statute was 
modified, altered and completed, and assumed its 
present shape ; and, about the commencement of the 
Collegiate term in autumn, four professors and one 
associate had been added to the body of instructors. 

You have been told that, in directing the prepara- 
tion of the statute, the Committee were instructed to 
comprehend in it the whole scheme of Collegiate and 
University studies contemplated by their former re- 
port. The phrase " University studies" was one of 
mere convenience ; perhaps not very accurate, and 
was intended to denote that instruction which might 
be imparted after graduation. 



13 



The studies denominated Collegiate are well under- 
stood. They comprise the various branches known 
as the Classical, Philosophical, Historical, Belles-let- 
tres, Mathematical, and in some degree Scientific. 
The latter term, however inappropriate as an exclu- 
sive name, has been assumed by that peculiar branch 
of human learning which comprehends the nature, 
operation and laws of Matter. That branch has been, 
and is, perpetually expanding by new discoveries. If 
it were expected that it should be included, much be- 
yond the elements, in the usual collegiate course, then 
a useful college education would be simply impos- 
sible. There had been indications abroad, that, not- 
withstanding its evident impracticability, this was 
expected. It would fatigue you to enter into any 
detail of the suggestions or discussions on this sub- 
ject. It may suffice, for this occasion, to say that an 
effort was made to satisfy, as far as possible, all de- 
mands, and that the plan now adopted, and about to 
go into operation, was upon the whole, after full con- 
sideration, regarded as the best which could be fallen 
upon, for an exj^eriment. 

That plan adopts in substance the former collegiate 
curriculum to the close of the Third or Junior year, 
with adaptations to the future studies, both sub-grad- 
uate and post-graduate. At the commencement of 
the Fourth or Senior year, the studies assume a 



14 ME. BETTS' ADDEESS. 

wider scope, and comprehend a variety of topics. 
These studies, too numerous to be pursued in one or 
two courses, even in the most elementary manner, are 
distributed into three departments, in order that they 
may be prosecuted with some hope of advantage. 
Up to this point of college life, the end in view is 
mainly to discipline and invigorate the mind, and to 
enlighten and purify the heart. Now, the object is to 
apply this intellectual light and vigor to the perma- 
nent acquisition of knowledge ; to emancipate the stu- 
dent gradually from the trammels of catechetical 
teaching, and to prepare him for the higher and more 
arduous eifforts of self-instruction. With this view, 
three departments are constructed, which are termed 
Schools of Letters, of Science, and of Jurisprudence ; 
the first of which has reference to general improve- 
ment; the two 'latter to specific objects, as indicated 
by their names. On entering the Senior year, each 
student may select either of these schools. Should 
he neglect to make a selection, he continues in the 
Classical or School of Letters. 

After graduation, the same schools are proposed to 
be continued for two years. A reference to the pro- 
posed course of instruction will show that they com- 
prehend a large circle of human learning. The 
instruction in these schools is not to be confined to 
the graduates of the college. It is open to the whole 



MR. BETTS' ADDEESS. 15 

world. A sufficient body of teachers is provided to 
commence the undertaking. A nucleus is presented 
for a great university, adapted and prepared to meet 
all the wants of the community. If there be really 
that demand for the acquisition of knowledge which 
has been supposed, it may here be satisfied. If there 
be in fact no such demand, or such only to a limited 
extent, time will soon develop the truth. It is indeed 
hoped that the graduates of the college, animated by 
a noble and inspiring love of learning, will not fail 
to take advantage of the proposed means of instruc- 
tion thus afforded to them, and that others will grad- 
ually be drawn to join them. 

The progress of the undertaking may be slow ; it 
may be unsuccessful. The slowness of its progress 
need, however, not to produce despair. Most things 
that are valuable and lasting are slow in progression. 
Time and experience will, however, soon demonstrate 
the utility of the attempt ; and it is so devised, that 
it may be expanded, contracted, or discontinued 
without difficulty. 

Among the late changes, it may be observed, that 
the Chapel exercises have been modified, and greater 
solemnity imparted to the service ; the Library has 
been stimulated ; large accessions have been made to 
the Chemical and Physical Departments ; the Astro- 
nomical Department forwarded, and measures taken 



16 



for the establisliment of an Observatory; and, in 
general, liberal contributions bave been made to tbe 
requirements of all tbe cbairs. The price of tuition 
has been reduced nearly one-half The division of 
the classes into sections gives an opportunity for 
more thorough instruction. Moreover, a Commission 
of Inquiry has been instituted, for gathering in- 
formation from every accessible quarter of this 
country, having in view the general advancement of 
learning, and enforcement of discipline, the results 
of which have not yet been made known to the 
Trustees. 

The revenue of the College is yet limited ; its en- 
largement is prospective, of course uncertain, and 
under any circumstances much below the common 
supposition. Should the effort now in progress be 
successful, the Trustees propose to add, from time to 
time, every necessary appliance for the advancement 
of learning, to the extent of the means enjoyed by 
them ; but they feel it a duty not to lavish those 
means, and, by heedlessly exhausting them, defeat the 
hopes of the true friends of education. 

A brief history has thus been offered of the late 
changes in the course of study, of their enlargement, 
and of the purposes and hopes of the Trustees in re- 
gard to their future operations. Before dismissing 
this subject, you will pardon a few general remarks 



IT 



having reference to the principles compreliended in 
the recent measures of the College. 

The young student, when he presents himself for 
admission into College, is just emerging from boy- 
hood ; and, before he completes the portion of time 
to be passed within its walls, will be, essentially, a 
man. The class of youth who are sent here are, for 
the most part, a select class ; selected from their sup- 
posed promise for the futm^e ; selected by the fond 
expectations of loving parents ; or to qualify them- 
selves rightly to occupy the position in society for 
which Providence appears to have designed them. 
They are to occupy the higher positions of society : 
those young men are thereafter to form a leaven, 
which is to spread its influence throughout the com- 
munity, either for evil or for good. If their tenden- 
cies be well directed, they will become a blessing to 
themselves, to their immediate companions, and to the 
world in which they may move. Should their ten- 
dencies be ill-directed, they will be equally a curse. 
With the vivacity and buoyancy of youth, with its 
joyous, exuberant and not easily resti'ained overflow 
of sph'its, they generally bring with them an appre- 
hension of truth, an instinct of honor, and an appre- 
ciation of justice, which, if discreetly managed, will 
lead and keep them in the right direction. If there 
be exceptions ; if there be found some ignoble spirits 



18 MR. BETTS' ADDEESS. 

who have strayed among them, it does not require 
much observation to detect them, and they should at 
once be rooted out. This young band, who annually 
present themselves, asking to be carried through the 
most critical portions of their lives, and who con- 
fidingly throw themselves into the protection of the 
College ; who come, in a measure, divested of the un- 
sleeping and anxious carefulness which has watched 
them from the cradle up to this period, when they 
seek to be instructed to walk alone ; to go forth from 
the College walls armed with the panoply of virtue 
and of learning; to meet the masses of evil which 
they will be sure to encounter in later life ; have a 
right to all the thought, all the intelhgence, and all 
the experience that can be brought to bear upon 
their situation. It is true that the period between 
their entrance into College life and their departure 
from it is short; but it is the very heart of their 
life ; it is just the period which gives color to their 
future, and stamps it for good or for evil in this 
world, and it may be in the world to come. The 
responsibility which rests upon giving a right direc- 
tion during this period, is just in proportion to the 
greatness of the results ; and no right-thinking man, 
whether among the Trustees or the Faculty, can fail 
to feel the graveness of the charge which is laid upon 
hun. Wliatever other duties may devolve upon the 



19 



authorities of tlie College, this one is clear, that they 
are bound to exercise their best energies and their 
best judgment for the benefit of the youth entrusted 
to their care ; and, although it may be incumbent on 
them to extend, as far as practicable, the circle of 
human learning, and to bring as many as possible 
within its operation, the other is the most pressing 
and paramount obligation. 

Perhaps it may be said, that the means to attain 
the desired ends are obvious — ^that they are simply 
Discipline and Education — words easy to be spoken ; 
difficult to be apprehended ; most difficult to be 
rightly employed. With regard to discipline, can 
you not see at once the difference which may result 
from regarding the young as noble, confiding, and 
honest, or as selfish, narrow, and insincere ? In the 
applications of rewards, can you not perceive the dis- 
tinction between those which appeal to lofty sen- 
timents, and those which address themselves to 
sordid feelings ? In punishments, between those 
which are gently but unavoidably applied as a warn- 
ing to youthful infirmity, and those which are rudely 
inflicted as a punishment of vice ? And yet these 
are but broad distinctions which separate many 
varieties. On the Trustees of the College it de- 
volves to prescribe judicious rules ; they should look 
well that those rules be founded on right principles ; 



20 MR. BETTS' ADDRESS. 

but on tlie Faculty lies a far greater weigM of duty. 
Their daily intercourse witli the students is not sus- 
ce23tible of regulation ; and it is from their conduct, 
and their example, that habits of order, diligence, 
obedience and truth, must be acquired : and as it is 
written, that spark kindleth spark, and fire answer- 
eth to fire, so the young men in their turn should 
never fail to give to generous confidence a generous 
response. 

With regard to Education, likewise, there are great 
diversities of opinion, both as respects its object and 
its means. By some it is regarded as a mere prepa- 
ration for an establishment in some calling or profes- 
sion; by others as the guide to the young for the 
discharge of all their duties in after-life; for thor- 
oughly understanding the nature of every relation 
that may be thrown upon them, and of applying the 
highest principles and the greatest power in every 
position in which they may be placed ; never allow- 
ing them for a moment to forget that they are heirs 
of an unending life, and stewards of a priceless trust. 
The former is the popular idea of collegiate and all 
other education — the latter is that which influences 
us here. To educate the intellect, to purify and 
direct the heart, to train the youthful aspirants to 
correct motives and designs, to provide them with 
the means of successfully pursuing any career which 



ME. BETTS' ADDEESS. 21 

tliey may liereafter select, tliese are the ends which 
this College has essentially in view, in its system of 
sub-graduate instruction. Nor does it adopt this sys- 
tem unaided by the lights of usage, experience, and 
authority. The gymnasia of Continental Europe 
and the great universities of the English Islands 
conduct their instruction upon this principle ; and, 
especially in the case of the latter, with wonderful suc- 
cess. The great thinkers of all times have advocated 
the cultivation of the mind, as the object of first 
importance ; and the acquisition and a]3plication of 
knowledge as altogether secondary. Of the great 
thinkers, it will be sufficient to point to one in the 
ancient, and another in modern times. 

In one of his dialogues, Plato rej^resents Socrates, 
when pointing to the magnificent works that extend- 
ed and secured the commerce of Athens, enlarged her 
revenues, and filled her with material comforts, and 
splendors, and luxuries, as calling all those posses- 
sions the merest trifles in comparison with the funda- 
mental virtues ; nay, more, as probable causes of 
future misfortune, and their projectors as authors, not 
of benefaction, but of calamity. 

One of the most brilliant intellects of our own 
days has not thought this subject beneath his mighty 
mind. A liberal education is defined by the late Sir 
William Hamilton to be " an education in which the 



22 ME. BETTS' ADDEESS. 

individual is cultivated, not as an instrument towards 
some ulterior end, but as an end unto himself alone : 
in other words as an education, in whicli his absolute 
perfection as a man, and not merely his relative 
dexterity as a professional man, is the scope imme 
diately in view." To add to these authorities would 
be easy, but is unnecessary. 

Looking at this subject from any point, we may 
safely conclude that the instruction in the College, 
covering the period of life between boyhood, and 
manhood, and forming the bridge by which we pass 
from home into the world, is one of peculiar im- 
portance. To the College is committed the mind of 
the future man at this critical time ; and it is the prop- 
er duty of the College to direct and superintend the 
mental and moral culture, and to form the mind or 
man. Moral and intellectual discipline is the object 
of Collegiate education. The mere acquisition of 
learning, however valuable and desirable in itself, is 
subordinate to this great work. Not only is this the 
peculiar business of the College, but in the College 
alone, as a general rule, can this work be performed. 
The design of a College is, to make perfect the human 
intellect in all its parts and functions, by means of a 
thorough training of the intellectual faculties to their 
full development, and, by the proper guidance of 
the moral functions, to a right direction. To form 



JIR. BETTS' ADDRESS. 23 

the mind, is, in short, the high design of education 
as sought in a College course. 

But this College, in the enlargement of its course 
and of its objects, does not propose to stop short here. 
Thus far the intellectual faculties have been devel- 
oped and strengthened ; and a right direction given 
to the moral functions. The youth is now supposed 
to be competent to begin any task to which his 
strong inclination, or peculiar disposition, may di- 
rect him ; and which he may undertake with greater 
prospect of usefulness than if any peculiar class 
of powers had been cultivated, to the neglect of 
others. 

To this time have been mainly used the common 
means of education, which are found in the classics, 
the mathematics, and the teachings of moral and 
mental science, in connection with the whole history 
of man, his thoughts, his relations, duties, deeds and 
productions; and these, it is thought, properly ap- 
plied and industriously appropriated, will produce 
the fairest result of a finished intellectual discipluie, 
and present an accomplished intellect, prepared for 
any career, competent to encounter any difficulties, 
in learning, in morals, or in action, and capable, with 
com-age and perseverance, of overcoming or remov- 
ing them. 

Then it is that the post-graduate or university es- 



24 



tablisliineiit offers its aid in the prosecution of special 
pm^suits, excluding, for the present, the faculties of 
Theology and Medicine. Then the young student, 
following the road which has been partially entered 
in the last year of his college life, may direct his ex- 
ertions to the particular calhng selected for his future 
career ; and then it is that Science, with its specula- 
tions, and discoveries, and applications, may be profit- 
ably studied. 

Permit a single observation more, and you shall 
no longer be detained from the discourse which is to 
follow. 

It may be remarked, that while augmentations 
have been made to all the other chairs of the college, 
those of the Greek and Latin alone are left as they 
were. Do not attribute this to any diminution of 
esteem for those venerable and noble languages. 
When the full course shall be in operation, adequate 
aid will not be wanting to those chairs ; but their in- 
cumbents are both able and willing to undertake all 
the present labors, heavy though they be. This Col- 
lege ever has acted upon the principle, that the very 
best means of intellectual training may be found in 
the learned languages. For this purpose, these lan- 
guages are successfully employed from the period 
when the child first acquires an easy mastery of his 
mother tongue for ordinary purposes, down to the 



MR. BETTS' ADDRESS. 25 

time when tlie intellect becomes vigorous in early 
manhood. During this period, the learned languages, 
by their novelty, regular structure and musical beau- 
ty, awaken a love of study, command the attention, 
strengthen the memory, improve the reasoning facul- 
ty and the judgment ; call into action exactness, com- 
parison, invention, self-reliance, and all the other 
faculties, besides laying np a rich store of beautiful 
images, noble sentunents, worthy exam23les, and a 
mass of facts which, dwelling in the midst of harmo- 
nious and perfect tongues, purify the heart, exalt and 
ennoble the principles, create and cultivate a refined 
taste, enlarge the understanding, arouse a love of free- 
dom and of virtue ; and, in short, fill the whole man 
with a power of appreciating excellence. 

Wretched, indeed, would be the day for this insti- 
tution, should she lose her proud position as the Clas- 
sical College of the country ; saddened the hopes of 
her sons, should she become indiiferent to the pre- 
cious treasures of those ancient people. Nowhere, 
since the creation of this earth, when first the Al- 
mighty Spirit spread forth his wings above the min- 
gled chaos, and with the fiat of his word called it to 
Light, to Order, and to Life, nowhere and at no 
time has the world beheld so marvellous an exhibition 
of intellectual power, as in the Grecian people, dur- 
ing the short period of Grecian domination ; nowhere 



26 



so exquisite an appreciation of beauty in all its forms, 
material and mental, and so wonderful a power of 
producing it; nowhere such models of intelligence 
in every branch of human acquisition and human in- 
quiry, which never have been equalled in after-times, 
and which serve to show of what the human mind is 
capable. 

Nor were the Romans less wonderful in their pecu- 
liar character. Deriving many of their acquisitions 
from the Greeks, and second to the Greeks alone, 
they far transcend all other people, and throw all 
other histories wholly in the shade. To count the 
gifts we have received from these two nations, 
whether in their laws, their literature, their customs, 
their arts, or the precious legacy of the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, transmitted in the Grecian tongue, we could 
not tell where to begin, or where to end. So abund- 
ant, indeed, are their productions, so precious their 
treasures, that the same eulogy, which would else- 
where be extravagance, becomes to them but truth. 
Never, therefore, may this venerable institution be- 
come insensible to the value of classic learning; 
never may she cease from its copious fountains to 
draw exuberant supplies ; never, never, may she for- 
get that, saving the gift of the Sacred Writings, in 
these old treasures of Greece and Rome are garnered 
the most precious stores of deep philosophy, unequal- 



ME. BETTS' ADDEESS, 27 

led wisdom, of unrivalled eloquence, of poetic excel- 
lence ; and there, too, those marvels of artistic beauty, 
elevating the imagination, refining the sentiments and 
purifying the heart, which age after age admires 
and wonders at, and which are endued with a grace 
and loveliness beyond the rivalry and almost the imi- 
tation of modern times. Never may our College 
cease to be a seminary in which such things are 
taught, and through which a knowledge of them 
may in some measure be attained : and i^ien, when, 
in her after-course, she is preparing her sons for the 
busy tumults of life, or unfolding to them the strange 
secrets of the material world, explaining their oper- 
ations, and applying their powers to the good of 
man, or walking with them in the high regions of 
the heavenly lights, she may say to them, My sons, I 
have tried in all things to perform my duty ; I have 
opened to you the treasures of the past and of the 
present ; I have sought to impart to )^ou not only 
learning but understanding ; I have taught you to 
regard knowledge no otherwise than as " a rich store- 
house for the glory of God and the relief of man's 
estate f and I charge you, as you value the privileges 
of the past and the aspirations of the future, I 
charge you, never to apply it to any lower pur- 
poses. 



CHEMISTRY; 

AN 

INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 

33eliberetJ before lf)e Stustees 

OF 

COLUMBIA COLLEGE 

February 4, A. D. 18£8, 

By CHARLES A. JOY, Ph.D., 

Professor of Chemistry in Colcmbu College. 



ADDRESS. 



In assuming tlie duties of the Chair to which the 
Trustees of Columbia Colle^^e have done me the honor 
to appoint me, it is proper that I should sketch the 
rise and progress of the science which I am called 
upon to teach, and vindicate its claims to be regarded 
as among the most important branches of human 
knowledge. 

Chemistry was not accorded a place as a distinct 
science, until within the memory of men still living. 
The name, it is true, had existed for centuries. 
With its prefix Al, it carries us away back to its 
learned Arabian professors, and suggests to us the dis- 
coveries they made and the uses they made of them. 
But it was not until the world had profited by Black's 
researches into Fixed Air, and Priestly had made his 
immortal discovery of Oxygen ; not until Cavendish 
had decomposed the ancient element of Water, and 
Lavoisier, while separating the pure jewel of scien- 
tific truth from the rubbish of ages, and extending, by 
his own investigations, the boundaries of Chemical 
knowledge, had given order and system to the results 



32 



of the labors of Ms predecessors and contemporaries 
that Chemistry was entitled to an independent posi- 
tion among the sciences. 

It is pretty evident that the Egyptians, at a very 
early period, had far outstripped their neighbors in 
the pm-suit of knowledge, and that, too, of various 
kinds, but more especially in the various departments 
of what we now call Natural Philosophy. Hence, it 
is common to attribute to them considerable acquaint- 
ance with Chemical facts. But whatever may have 
been the extent of this knowledge, it would seem 
that it was confined to the priests. In this they were 
by no means alone, for such was then, and for very 
long after, the case, among all nations. The priest- 
hood was the great repository of learning of every 
sort ; the rehgion, the laws, and the government were 
all more or less in their hands, as well as the know- 
ledge of the facts and principles on which were based 
their systems of both mental and physical philosophy, 
the greater part of which they seem to have carefully 
concealed from the popular mind. 

It was to these Egyptians that the Greeks were in- 
debted for much of their knowledge. Then, as now, 
the true seekers after knowledge and truth left their 
homes to look in other lands for additions to their 
stores. And it was when thus engaged that Pytha- 
goras, and Solon, and Herodotus, and Plato, and 



33 

others of the mighty and noble spirits 'of Greece 
gained the information and acquired the experience 
with which they returned to their own land, to repro- 
duce, and vastly improve uj)on, what they had learned 
from the sages of Egypt. From the Greeks, again, 
the Romans received their most valuable lessons, in 
all learning, and in this, our particular branch of 
knowledge, as in all others. Nor were they at all 
negligent of their acquisitions, for they soon applied 
their energy and newly acquired skill in such a way 
as to make very considerable contributions to Chemi- 
cal Science. 

True, they both had some strange notions about the 
use to be made of their Chemical knowledge, which, 
however, were thoroughly utilitarian. The notion of 
transmuting the base metals into gold was such an one. 
And this is supposed to have existed among the 
Greeks. One interpretation of the Golden Fleece is, 
that it is a mythical expression for a parchment on 
which had been written a description of the process 
of making gold. Aristotle recognized four elements, 
viz. : Earth, Air, Fire and Water, though he also 
taught the existence of still another substance of a 
more ethereal nature, which he called the fifth essence, 
or, as it is expressed in Latin, essentia quinta (quin- 
tessence) ; and this fifth element played an important 
part in the controversies of after-ages. 



34 

These strange notions, as we call them, did not 
vanish with Grecian eloquence, or fall with Roman 
power. It was in following out such notions that the 
Alchemists of the Middle Ages kept on searching for 
the Philosopher's Stone, that great transmuter of all 
base things into veritable gold. Though they never 
found the stone, we have this day to thank them 
for the many valual^le discoveries which they did 
make, and of which the Chemists of the 18th and 
19th centuries were able, to much purpose, to avail 
themselves. 

By these Alchemists Sulphuric Acid was discovered 
more than a thousand years ago ; and to them we also 
owe Muriatic Acid, Nitric Acid, Ammonia, the Fixed 
Alkalies, Alcohol, Ether, and many Alloys of the 
Metals. They accounted for everything in what we 
would call a supernatural way; they looked upon 
bodies not merely as inorganic masses, but they taught 
the presence of a spirit in every combination, and, in 
accordance with their belief and their teaching, they 
gave names which still remain in daily use among us. 
To this we owe such names as Spirit of Wine, Spirit 
of Salt, Spirit of Ether, and the hke. At a later 
period. Van Helmont, following somewhat in their 
path, gave to all aeriform bodies the name of Gheist 
or Spirit, and from which we derive the modern word 
Gas. 



ME. joy's address. 35 

As they taught the existence of a spiiit in bodies 
so they taught that these bodies were affected in 
various ways. The baser metals they spoke of as dis- 
eased ; Brass was diseased Gold ; Quicksilver, diseased 
Silver ; and so they accounted for all the phenomena 
of nature in a manner which, at the present day, it is 
difficult to look upon as having ever been regarded as 
philosophical. For example, they said that the cause 
of the falling of a body is its weight, and that weight 
is the tendency of a body to fall. A stone falls, 
said they, because it is heavy, that is, because it 
has a tendency to downward motion. Opium, they 
said, produces sleep, because it is a body to which 
belongs a sleep-producing property. The caustic pro- 
perties of Potash were said to be due to a something 
which they called Causticum. And in this manner 
they were prepared to give an explanation of every 
phenomenon of nature. 

For fourteen hundi-ed years no Alchemist ventured 
to dispute the views of his predecessors. An unqua- 
lified submission to the traditions of the past charac- 
terized this long period. But the founding of the 
Universities, the discovery, first, of the passage round 
the Cape of Good Hope, and then of the American 
Continent, gave an impulse to everything, and occasi- 
oned a greater interchange of knowledge among the 
nations, whilst the seizure of Constantinople by the 



36 



Turks, in A. D. 1453, scattered a knowledge of the 
Arts and Sciences tlirougkout Western Europe. The 
invention of Printing and tlie events of tke Keform- 
ation put an end to the blind obedience to the 
authorities of the past, which had so long prevailed, 

Paracelsus was one of the first to impart a new 
direction to Chemical researches. He affirmed that 
the decayed forces of the human constitution might be 
indefinitely extended by means within the reach of 
man. His dreams are matters of amusement now, 
but the value of his influence, in breaking up the old 
alchemistic theories, cannot be overrated. He was a 
Harbinger of our great Science, and a Pioneer in its 
work of discovery, and therefore entitled to more 
than a passing notice in its History. 

Philip Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombas- 
tus von Hohenheim, as he styled himself, was born in 
Einsiedeln, Switzerland, A. D. 1493. His father was 
a Physician, and early instructed him in Medicine, 
Astrology, and Alchemy. Paracelsus was a great 
traveler, visiting nearly every part of Europe, and 
finally retiruig to Saltzburg, where he died, A. D. 
1541. Though he was not old when he died, it was 
generally believed that he had discovered the Ehxir 
Vitse, and his tomb became an object of superstitious 
veneration. Even to the present day the stones about 
it are worn away by the numbers who come to pray 



MR. joy's address. 37 

for friends afflicted witli disease. I once Avent to visit 
the laboratory of this remarkable man. A tablet on 
the wall indicated the house, and some flowers in a 
window showed that it was inhabited. I readily ob- 
tained permission to examine the room in which Para- 
celsus had compounded those strange mixtures which 
are not dreamt of even in the quackery of our day. 
Scarcely a remnant of the old hearth and flues re- 
mained ; but it was interesting to stand upon the 
spot on which the first great opposition was made to 
the Alchemistic theories, and from which Chemistry 
first started upon its path of usefulness to mankind. 
For two hundred years, the attention of Chemists hav- 
ing been withdrawn, through the influence of Para- 
celsus, from the search after the Philosopher's Stone, 
investigators took the direction of Pharmaceutical 
Chemistry, and some important discoveries were made. 

Stahl, who died A. D. 1685, was the first to pro- 
mulge the Phlogistic theory, which occupied such an 
important place in the studies of a hundred years. 

Phlogiston, according to him, was present in every 
Chemical phenomenon. He taught, for instance, that 
Phosphorus, when burnt, loses its Phlogiston, and that 
the white acid, which is the result of the combustion, 
if mixed with charcoal and distilled, yields Phosphorus, 
because the coal gives back the lost Phlogiston to the 
Phosphorus. And it is remarkable that, although the 



38 ME. joy's address. 

substance, in burning, is increased in weight, tliey still 
clung to tbe idea that it lost Phlogiston, though this 
Phlogiston, they maintained, was possessed of levity^ 
and thus made a body lighter. This theory was stoutly 
maintained for a hundred years, until overturned by 
the grandest of all Chemical discoveries, that of Oxy- 
gen, which was made by Joseph Priestley, on the first 
day of August, A. D. 17 74. 

A dispute in the French Academy, between Cadet 
and Baume, about the red-oxide of Mercury, led to 
Pmestley's making some researches into the properties 
of this compound. He concentrated the solar-rays 
upon the red-precipitate, and preserved the gas which 
was evolved ; he applied a lighted taper to this gas, 
and from that moment the discovery had been made. 
According to his own account, it was accident which 
led to the discovery, but accident only accords such 
favors- tQ> those who deserve them. The man who 
had discovered nine gases, who had invented all 
the apparatus necessary to prepare and study them, 
could well have laid claim to this immortal dis- 
covery. 

Chemistry, as a distinct science, dates from this 
discovery. It is nearly of the same age as our Re- 
public, and, in its way, it has made equal progress to 
greatness. The immortal discoverer of Oxygen sought 
refuge in this country, and died at Northumberland, 



MR. joy's address. 39 

Pennsylvania, on the sixth day of February, A. D. 
1804, in the Ylst year of his age. 

" Westward the Star of Empire takes its way." 

May this prove true in Science and Art, as well as in 
political advancement. 

There is something sublime in the thought of be- 
ing the discoverer of such an element as Oxygen. 
When we contemplate its abundance, its necessity to 
the very existence of all animated nature, and the 
part it plays everywhere, Ave are struck with amaze- 
ment that it should have remained so long unknown, 
and are able to appreciate more fully the importance 
of its discovery. 

Independently of Priestley, and about the same 
time, the famous Swedish Chemist, Scheele, made the 
same discovery ; but to Priestley is due the honor of 
having laid the foundation upon which the whole 
superstructure of Chemistry has since been built.,. 

We must not pass fi'om the last century into our 
own, without mentioning, with due honor, the name 
of Lavoisier, for the world is chiefly indebted to the 
genius of this great man for the invention of that 
new Nomenclature in Chemistry which marked a 
brilhant era in the History of the Science. 

This remarkable man, " possessed of fortune suffi- 
cient to secure to him all the gratifications of luxury, 
all the splendors of a princely establishment, gave his 



40 ME. joy's addeess. 

time and his entlmsiasm to the Science of Cliemistry. 
But, unfortunately, lie took sucli an active part in the 
first scenes of the French Kevokition as to render 
himself obnoxious to Robesj)ierre. He was pursued 
to his retreat, where he was carrying on a train of 
magnificent Chemical Experiments, and hurried 
thence to the scaffold." There were few victims of 
those bloody times who could not have been better 
spared than this illustrious man. Strange fate of the 
two great founders of Chemistry, the one beheaded, 
the other (driven an exile to a foreign land. 

It was at the beginning of the present century that 
Berzelius, the most illustrious of all the Chemists that 
ever lived, first appeared as an independent investiga- 
tor in the field of Physical Science. Volta had given 
to the world the Battery which bears his name, and 
the whole Scientific community was in excitement 
upon the subject. Berzelius entered upon investiga- 
tions by aid of the Battery, and he was the first to 
discover the thread which has led to the explanation 
of many of the mysteries in Chemical combinations. 
The account of the investigations, in the course of 
which he systematized bodies in reference to their posi- 
tive and negative poles, was published in GelileviJs 
Journal^ during the year 1803. Three years later 
(in 1806), Sir Humphrey Davy published an account 
of similar researches, in which he made no mention 



ME. JOYS ADDEESS. 41 

of Berzelius, and for which lie received from Napole- 
on the prize of three thousand francs, for the most 
valuable researches in Voltaism. 

After the discovery of the Metals of the Alkalies, 
in the year 1807, Berzelius continued his researches, 
and was the first to use Mercury at one of the poles 
of the Battery. It was not, however, with Voltaism 
alone that Berzelius, in his earlier years, occupied 
his time. The great Mineralogist, Hisinger, induced 
him to turn his attention to the quantitative analysis 
of minerals. He acknowledged to Rose, in after- 
years, that these investigations were undertaken more 
to oblige Hisinger than for any particular interest they 
had for himself But, after the discovery of the great 
law of Chemical pro]3ortions, the case was different. 

Berzelius was compelled to earn his living as a 
practicing physician. This, at times, gave a particu- 
lar turn to his investigations. Hence, we find him 
examining Medicinal Springs ; or establishing, at 
Stockholm, the manufacture of artificial Mineral Wa- 
ters ; or, as a physician, early giving his attention to 
Physiological and Organic Chemistry, and it is from 
this circumstance that we are indebted to him for 
many new and beautiful processes of Analysis. Then 
again we find him, in some of his earliest efforts, busy 
in the examination of Silica and Cast Iron. 

During the first decennary of this century, Berze- 



42 



lius was induced, by the general interest in G-alvan- 
ism, by the influence of his friend Hisinger, and by his 
own necessities as a Physician, to make scientific re- 
searches ; but, after the idea of Chemical proportions 
was started, he devoted all his energies to Chemistry ; 
he soon put forth the Law of these proportions, and 
upon that Law he founded all the subsequent experi- 
ments and researches of his life. He examined with the 
greatest care, and by different modes of Analysis, a 
vast number of Chemical compounds, and was thus led 
to discover many methods of analysis, which are still 
pursued. These researches and their results were pub- 
lished in the year 1810. At the time they were carried 
on, Re-agents were scarcely to be had in Sweden, and 
Berzelius was compelled to make them for himself ; 
even Alcohol and the most ordinary Acids were pre- 
pared in his own Laboratory. The extraordinary 
spectacle was, at this time, presented to the world, of 
a Philosopher at work in his kitchen, making re- 
searches which were destined to revolutionize Chem- 
ical Science, and for which the world could not have 
adequately compensated him if it had erected for 
him a Laboratory of solid gold ; while by his side, at 
the same hearth, his faithful servant, Anne, was pre- 
paring his frugal meal. He introduced more accurate 
Balances ; the use of smaller amounts of substances 
for analysis ; the lamp which bears his name ; plati- 



ME. joy's addeess. 43 

num-crucibles ; Swedish filtering- j)aper ; funnels ; 
beaker glasses ; and many pieces of apparatus which 
now seem to us very common and simple indeed. He 
was also the first to make the Laboratory a light and 
cheerful study instead of a dark and dismal cellar. 
As it was necessary for him to economize in every- 
thing, he took lessons in Glass-blowing, and learned 
the trade of the Joiner, so that he could make nearly 
all of his apparatus himself It was in the year 1815 
that Berzehus introduced the symbols which are now 
employed in the place of the Alchemistic figures, 
which are retained only to designate the planets, 
and was thus enabled to express the Chemical 
com230sition of different bodies by Formulae. Dal- 
ton had undertaken, in the year 1808, to establish 
some simple method for expressing the composition 
of bodies, but it was not so practical as the one 
prepared by Berzelius, and is, at present, scarcely 
known. It was not until he had occupied ten years 
in examininsr the elements and their combinations 
that Berzelius was able to publish, in the year 1818, 
his Tables, containing the Atomic-weights of nearly 
two thousand simple and compound bodies. 

It has already been said that Berzelius, at an early 
period, gave some attention to Organic Chemistry. 
The first important analyses in this department were 
made by Thenard and Gay-Lussac, in the year 1811. 



44 



But, in the year 1814, Berzelius publislieda paper on 
tMs subject, in wliicli lie applied tlie Law of Cliem- 
ical-proportions to Organic Bodies. He found that 
Organic Acids, and even indifferent substances, form- 
ed compounds of fixed proportions with Organic 
Oxides. This originated the Radical theory, and 
through its application we are able to ascertaui the 
Atomic-weights of Organic substances. 

Since the death of Berzelius many Radicals, pro- 
posed by him as hypothetical, have been con&med by 
actual discovery. 

The discovery and investigation of the properties of 
Selenium was one of the greatest works of Berzelius. 
Excepting the discovery of Selenic acid, in the year 
182*7, by his pupil, Mitscherlich, very little has since 
been added to our knowledge of this metal. " The 
investigations upon this element," says Rose, " were 
made with half an ounce of substance, a part of which 
was lost by the carelessness of a servant." The 
beauty of the work can only be compared with that 
of the investigations upon Iodine by Gay-Lussac. 
Berzehus examined one hundred and twenty Salts of 
Sulphur, many of them quantitatively. The publica- 
tion of his famous Hand-book occasioned the examin- 
ation of a vast number of substances, the composi- 
tion of which had never been satisfactorily determined. 
It is rarely within the ability of one man to leave 



MR. joy's address. 45 

such a monument of greatness behind hmi. As long 
as Chemistry endures, this book will claim a place in 
every Laboratory, and the name of Berzelius will be 
mentioned with honor. 

I cannot now speak of his many other contributions 
to Chemical Science. His last great work was the 
Examination of Meteorites, in which, without success, 
he sought to discover some new elements. His age 
and frequent headaches did not admit of his working 
in the Laboratory. He complained of his eyes and of 
loss of memory. As he could not carry on his prac- 
tical labors, he devoted so much the more time to the 
theory and literature of the Science. After he became 
permanent Secretary of the Royal Academy he was 
successful in mtroducmg yearly reports of the progress 
of the Sciences. He undertook, as his part, Physics, 
Mineralogy, Geology, and all branches of Chemistry. 
His first Report, which was made thirty-six years 
ago, was contained in a very thin octavo volume. At 
the present time such a volume could not contain the 
index of the discoveries made in one year, nor would 
it, now, be within the power of one mind to gather 
in and store up the vast harvest which the wide field 
covered by these Sciences at this day yields. 

When Berzelius visited Germany, in the year 1845, 
he was everywhere received by the students with ad- 
dresses, processions, and other tokens of honor. His 



46 ME. joy's address. 

pupils, already great and renowned, flocked round 
him, and lie had no occasion to be ashamed of any 
of them. One day when, in company with Hum- 
boldt, Mitscherlich, the two Roses, Woehler, Ehren- 
berg, and von Buch, he drove out to the environs of 
Berlin, they stopped to examine a Boulder outside 
the gate. What a group was standing around this 
erratic mass ! each contributing, of his vast knowledge, 
to resolve some question connected with its history. 
Berzelius could give its exact Chemical composition ; 
Mitscherlich apply his Law of Isomorphism ; Woehler 
tell whether any of the Elements discovered by him 
were contained in it ; Henry Rose prescribe the best 
methods of analysis ; Gustavus Rose measure accurately 
every crystal; Leopold von Buch explain its Geo- 
logical origin; Ehrenberg find former hfe in its 
minutest grains ; while the comprehensive genius of 
Humboldt could sum up the case for all sides, and pro- 
nounce a decision to which every one would cheerfully 
submit. A piece of this Boulder was broken off, and 
carried to Goettingen by Woehler ; it afterwards found 
its way to this country, and is now preserved at Am- 
herst College. 

I have dwelt thus long upon the name and works 
of Berzehus, because, in speaking of Chemistry, that 
name and those works are so interwoven with the 
history of that Science, that neither can be fairly pre- 



MK. joy's address. 47 

sented witliout dispLaying the otlier. His influence, 
too, is not limited to his personal labors, but still lives 
in the pupils he trained. It is remarkable how many 
eminent men received theu' first impulse in his Labor- 
atory. Mitscherlich, Henry and Gustavus Kose, 
Magnus, Gmehn, Woehler and Turner were among 
the number. 

It has been my good fortune to sit at the feet of 
some of these pupils of Berzelius, and through them I 
have endeavored to di'aw inspirations from his instruc- 
tions ; and I feel that I am but paying a small portion 
of the debt due to a great teacher, by whose lessons 
I have thus profited, as well as performing an appro- 
priate duty on this pubhc inauguration of my appoint- 
ment to this Chair of Chemistry, in thus rendering 
my humble homage to his exalted genius. 

Tune win not allow me to dwell any longer on the 
History of Chemistry. The sketch already given 
shows its very recent origin, and its rapid growth. 
As an Abstract Science, its progress has been wonder- 
ful. It has almost approached the Mathematics in its 
definite precision, and it may be said to be daily as- 
suming a more and more strictly Mathematical form. 
But it is not confined to abstract principles ; it has 
descended into the daily walks of practical life. Some 
of its greatest discoveries have become so familiar in 
their practical applications, that we almost forget 



48 



tlieir scientific origin. In the trite allusions to the 
triumphs of the Steam-engine and of the Electric 
Telegraph, the obligations we owe to Chemistry are 
well nigh forgotten. How few are there who, behold- 
ing the beautiful light which sheds its lustre around 
us this evening, remember that to the labors of men 
of Science we owe this great social blessing. " When 
the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed, 
and the fruit tree yielding fruit, and GOD had said 
' Let there be light,' and there was light," each ray 
of sunshine, as it impinged upon tree or flower, was 
caught up, and held in close embrace, and, with the 
decay of the plant, was carried down into the earth, 
changed by slow degrees in form, and there kept a 
close prisoner, until the genius of man could dehver 
it from its bondage. These imprisoned sunbeams, 
after the lapse of ages, are set at hberty at the beck 
of man, and here we see them gushing forth, from 
many a jet, turning our night into brilHant day. If 
Chemistry had contributed no other blessing to the 
world, this alone would have entitled it to the grati- 
tude of man. 

The practical utility of Abstract Science is not re- 
cognized by the bulk of mankind. They become so 
familiar with the Material results, that they forget 
altogether its Scientific origin, and sometimes look 
with scorn upon studies which are now laying the 



49 



foundation for practical good for a future generation. 
As Baron von Liebig well remarks, " In our schools 
mere children are now taught truths,' the attainment 
of which has cost immense labor and indescribable 
effort. They smile when we tell them that an Italian 
Philosopher wrote an elaborate Treatise to prove that 
the snow found upon Mount ^Etna consists of the same 
substance as the snow upon the Alps of Switzerland, 
and that he heaped proof upon proof that both these 
snows, when melted, yielded water possessed of the 
same properties. 

" When a school-boy takes a glass full of liquid, and, 
placing a loose piece of paper over it, inverts the glass 
without spilling a drop of its contents, he only as- 
tonishes another child by his performance, and yet 
this is the identical experiment which renders the 
name of Torricelli immortal. Our children have more 
correct notions of Nature and Natural phenomena 
than had Plato ! They may laugh at the errors com- 
mitted by Pliny in his Natural History." Indeed, no 
Science exhibits more beautifully the harmony be- 
tween Abstract truth and Practical utility ; and there 
is none in which thorough cultivation is more dii^ectly 
beneficial to the world at large. The Chemists of 
the world are accumulating a great store of knowl- 
edge, the utility of which, to the human race, can 
hardly be overrated. Its far-reaching results extend 



50 ME. joy's addeess. 

to almost every article of human use ; and Scientific 
truths, which now seem without any practical utility, 
will, without doubt, yield rich fruits to another gener- 
ation. 

But, of all countries where the cultivation of 
Science would produce the most useful results, our 
own stands conspicuous. With the natural wealth so 
richly spread over our wide Empire, in all that the 
bounteous earth produces, and the hidden stores she 
carries in her bosom, our countrymen need but the 
key which Science gives to enable them to unlock 
their treasure-house. But their impatience for results, 
their excessively practical character, make them miss 
the success they might securely attain by pursuing 
the proper method with patience and perseverance. 
How many wild schemes of speculation might have 
been avoided, how many fortunes saved from ruin by 
a proper application of Scientific knowledge ! 'No 
greater benefaction could be bestowed on our coun- 
try than to diffiise everywhere within its borders 
sound Scientific principles, and any measures tending 
to this end must contribute, directly and largely, to 
the public good. Our country needs not only the 
widest diffusion, but also the highest grade of Science. 
How can it be attained? By devising and putting 
into operation the means adequate to produce the 
desired result. 



51 

The great want of this country is a University 
where Science can be taught far beyond the usual 
College course, where the students may be led into 
the profounder regions of the interpretation of phe- 
nomena, as well as into the practical application of 
Science to the daily wants of man. 

We present the extraordinary spectacle of a nation 
possessing unbounded wealth, and yet affording no 
aid to that very Science to which we are chiefly in- 
debted for onr material success. A University is the 
great educational want of America. In other lands 
the government extends its protection and aid ' not 
only to Elementary Schools and Colleges, but- also to 
Universities. Some part of what is done by govern- 
ments abroad, is effected by private munificence here, 
at home. All honor to men like Lawrence, Peabody, 
Astor, Lennox, Nott, Delavan, and to one in our own 
city, who has erected a massive structure to be devo- 
ted to Science and Art, and which, notwithstanding 
another corporate name, will ever be known as The 
Cooper Institute. 

We need more such men to aid us in carrying out 
the work ; but the founding and building up of a 
Unversity is beyond the power of individual effort. 
May we not consider it Providential that Columbia 
College is placed in a position which will enable her 
to confer this great blessing on our land ? Placed at 



52 MR. joy's addeess. 

the great centre of all tlie interests of our country, 
witli the lieaving vitality wliicli is around her, and 
with ample means, we may safely indulge the hope 
that the great scheme, which her Trustees have form- 
ed, will be carried out to completion, and that, at 
some not distant day, a great University will be es- 
tablished, which will afford a home for those scholars 
who are now driven to foreign lands to perfect them- 
selves in Science. But great as the present advantages 
and the prospective wealth of Columbia may be, the 
aid of every lover of education will be needed to 
secure success. I feel confident that this aid will not 
be wanting, that the dishonor of America will soon 
be wiped away, and that we shall see a University 
worthy of the name, and worthy of our country. 
When that day comes our young men will find other 
professions besides the few which they can now pur- 
sue, and they will discover, in Science, charms far 
more attractive than can be found in the frivolous 
amusements and ignoble dissipations by which they 
are, now, too often led away. Chemistry, alone, is com- 
prehensive enough to receive all who may wish to ap- 
proach her. The separate fields of Pharmacy, Agri- 
culture, Analysis, Physiology, Technology, and Organic 
Chemistry, have been but partially explored. We are 
upon the threshold of discovery in them all, and the 
progress of Science stands still for want of laborers. 



ME. joy's addeess. 53 

On surveying this vast and ever-spreading field, 
ever opening, as it is, into new regions with each 
new accession of knowledge, I am awe-struck, and feel 
almost rebuked for my presumption in undertaking, 
single-handed, to introduce the pupils of Columbia 
College into this boundless domain of Science. I 
look forward, however, to the better day of the Uni- 
versity, when I shall have the co-operation and sup- 
port of fellow-laborers in this great field, each culti- 
vating his own portion of the domain, each adding to 
the great common stock of Scientific Truth, and all 
raising still higher the renown of this venerable In- 
stitution, and rendering it more and more a glory and 
blessing to our country. 



y i 



INAUGURAL ADDRESS 



FRANCIS LIEBER, LL. D., 

frotesor of li^torj aiti f 0litical %mm. 

Delivered on the 17th of February, 1858. 



ERRATA. 

Page 73, line 15, read anew for new. 
" 75, " 17, " IS for ARE. 

" 105, " 18, " THEMSELVES for SELVES. 

" 114, " 23, leave out the words, the memokv of. 



ADDRESS. 



The author, requested by the Board of Trustees to prepare a copy 
of his inaugural address for publication, has given the substance, 
and in many places his words, as originally delivered, so far as he 
remembered them ; but, some of his friends in the Board, having 
advised him not to restrict himself in the written address, to the 
limits necessary for one that is spoken, he has availed himself of this 
liberty, in writing on topics so various and comprehensive, as those 
that legitimately belong to the branches assigned to him in this 
institution. The extent of this paper will sufficiently indicate this. 



Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees: 

We are again assembled to do lionor to tlie 
cause of knowledge — to that sacred cause of learn- 
ing, inquiry and rearing to learn and to inquire ; of 
truth, culture, wisdom, of humanity. Whenever men 
are met together to reverence a great cause or to do 
homage to noble names, it is a solemn hour, and you 
have assigned a part in this solemnity to me. I 
stand here at your behest. No one of you expects 
that I should laud the sciences which form my par- 
ticular pursuit, above all others. Every earnest schol- 
ar, every faithful student of any branch, is a catholic 
lover of all knowledge. I would rather endeavor, 
had I sujfficient skill, to raise before you a triumj)hal 
arch in honor of the sciences which you have con- 



58 ADDEESS 

fided to my teacMng, witL. some bas-reliefs and some 
entablatures, commemorating victories acbieved by 
them in tlie field of common progress ; taking lieed 
however that I do not fall into the error of attempt- 
ing to prove " to the Spartans that Hercules was a 
strong man." 

Before I proceed to do the honorable duty of this 
evening, I ask your leave to express on this, the first 
opportunity which has offered itself, my acknowledg- 
ment for the suffrages which have placed me in the 
chair I now occupy. You have established a profes- 
sorship of political science in the most populous and 
most active city in the widest commonwealth of 
an iatensely political character ; and this chair you 
have unanimously given to me. I thank you for 
your confidence. 

Sincere, however, as these acknowledgments are, 
warmer thanks are due to you, and not only my own, 
but I believe I am not trespassing when I venture to 
offer them in the name of this assemblage, for the 
enlargement of our studies. You have engrafted a 
higher and a wider course of studies on your ancient 
institution which in due time may expand into a real, 
a national university, a university of large found- 
ation and of highest scope, as your means may 
increase and the public may support your endeavors. 
So be it. 



OF ME. LIEBEE. 59 

We stand in need of a national university, the 
highest apparatus of the highest modern civilization. 
We stand in need of it, not only that we may appear 
clad with equal dignity among the sister nations of 
our race, but on many grounds peculiar to ourselves. 
A national university in our land seems to have be- 
come one of those topics on which the public mind 
comes almost instinctively to a conclusion, and whose 
reality is not unfrequently preceded by prophetic 
rumor. They are whispered about ; their want is 
felt by all ; it is openly pronounced by many until 
wisdom and firmness gather the means and resolutely 
provide for the general necessity. There is at pres- 
ent an active movement of university reform prevail- 
ing in most countries of Europe ; others have insti- 
tutions of such completeness as was never known 
before, and we, one of the fom* leading nations, ought 
not to be without our own, a university, not national, 
because established by our national government; 
that could not well be, and if it were, surely would 
not be well ; but I mean national in its spirit, in its 
work and effect, in its liberal appointments and its 
comprehensive basis. I speak fervently ; I hope, I 
speak knowingly ; I speak as a scholar, as an Ameri- 
can citizen; as a man of the nineteenth century in 
which the stream of knowledge and of education 
courses deep and wide. I have perhaps a special 



60 ADDRESS 

riglit to urge this subject, for I am a native of tliat 
city whicli is graced witli the amplest and the highest 
university existing. I know, not only what that 
great institution does, but also what it has effected in 
times of anxious need. When Prussia was humbled, 
crippled, and impoverished beyond the conception of 
those that have never seen with their bodily eyes 
universal destitution and national ruin, there were 
men left that did not despair, like the foundation 
walls of a burnt house. They resolved to prepare 
even in those evil days, even in presence of the vic- 
torious hosts, which spread over the land like an 
inundation in which the ramified system of police 
drew the narrow-meshed seine for large and small 
victims — even then to prepare for a time of resusci- 
tation. The army, the taxes, the relation of the peas- 
ant to the landholder, the city government and the 
communal government — all branches of the adminis- 
tration were reformed, and, as a measure of the 
highest statesmanship, the moral and intellectual ele- 
vation of the whole nation was decided upon. Those 
men that reformed every branch of government reso- 
lutely invigorated the mind of the entire realm by 
thorough education, by an all-pervading common 
school system, which carries the spelling-book and 
the multiplication table to every hut, by high schools 
of a learned and of a poly technical character, and by 



OF ME. LIE BEE. 61 

universities of the loftiest aim. The universities, still 
remaining in the reduced kingdom were reformed, 
and a national university was planned, to concentrate 
the intellectual rays and to send back the intensified 
light over the land. It was then that men like Stein, 
one of the greatest statesmen Europe has produced, 
and the scholar-statesman William Humboldt — his 
brother Alexander went to our Andes — and Niebuhr, 
the bank officer and historian, and Schleiermacher, 
the theologian and translator of Plato, and Wolf, the 
enlarger of philology and editor of Homer, with 
Buttman the grammarian, and Savigny, the greatest 
civilian of the age, and Fichte and Steffens the philos- 
ophers, these and many more less known to you, but 
not less active, established the national university in 
the largest city of Prussia for the avowed purpose of 
quickening and raising German nationality. All his- 
torians as well as all observing cotemporaries are '^^ 
agreed that she performed her part well. In less 
than seven years that maimed kingdom rose and be- 
came on a sudden one of the leading powers in the 
greatest military struggle on record, calling for un- 
heard of national effi^rts, and that great system of 
education, which rests like a high and long arch on 
the two buttresses, the common school and the uni- 
versity, served well and proved efficient in the hour 
of the highest national need ; and, let me add, at that 



62 ADDEESS 

period when tlie matrons carried even their wedding 
rings to the mint, to exchange them for iron ones 
with the inscription : Grold I gave for Ii'on, the halls of 
that noble university stood mute. Students, profess- 
ors, all, had gone to the rescue of their country, and 
Napoleon honored them by calling them in his proc- 
lamations, with assumed contempt, the school-boy sol- 
diers. They fought, as privates and as officers, 
with the intelligence and pluck of veterans and the 
dash of patriotic youth, and when they had fought 
or toiled as soldiers toil, in the day, many of them 
sang in the nightly bivouac those songs, that swell 
the breasts of the Germans to this hour. 

We are, indeed, not prostrated like Prussia after 
the French conquest, but we stand no less in need of 
a broad national institution of learning and teaching. 
Our government is a federal union. We loyally ad- 
here to it and turn our faces from centralization, 
however brilliant, for a time, the lustre of its focus 
may appear, however imposingly centred power, 
that saps self-government, may hide for a day the 
inherent weakness of military concentrated poli- 
ties. But truths are truths. It is a truth that mo- 
dern civilization stands in need of entire countries ; 
and it is a truth that every government, as indeed 
every institution whatever is, by its nature, exposed 
to the danger of gradually increased and, at last. 



OF MR. LIEBEE. 63 

excessive action of its vital principle. One-sidedness 
is a universal effect of man's state of sin. Confeder- 
acies are exposed to the danger of sej unction as uni- 
tary governments are exposed to absorbing central 
power — centrifugal power in the one case, centri- 
petal power in the other. That illustrious predecessor 
of ours, from whom we borrowed our very name, 
the United States of the Netherlands ailed long with 
the paralyzing poison of sej unction in her limbs, 
and was brought to an early grave by it, after having 
added to the stock of humanity the worshipful names 
of William of Orange, and de Witt, Grotius, de 
Euyter and William the Third.* There is no German 



* Every historian knows that William of Orange, the founder of the 
Netherlands' republic, had much at heart to induce the cities of the new 
union to admit representatives of the country; but the "sovereign" cities 
would allow no representatives to the farmers and landowners, unless noble- 
men, who, nevertheless, were taking their full share in the longest and most 
sanguinary struggle for independence and liberty ; but the following detail, 
probably, is not known to many. The estates of Holland and West Fries- 
land were displeased with the public prayers for the Prince of Orange, which 
some high-Calvanistic ministers were gradually introducing, in the latter half 
of the seventeenth century, and in 1663, a decree was issued ordaining to 
pray first of all " for their noble high mightinesses, the estates of Holland and 
West Friesland, as the true sovereign, and only sovereign power after God, 
in this province ; next, for the estates of the other provinces, their allies, and 
for all the deputies in the assembly of the States General, and of the Council 
of State." 

" Separatismus," as German historians have called the tendency of the 
German princes to make themselves as independent of the empire as possible, 
until their treason against the country reached " sovereignty," has made the 
poHtical history of Germany resemble the river Rhine, whose glorious water 
runs out in a number of shallow and muddy streamlets, having lost its im- 
perial identity long before reaching the broad ocean. 



64 ADDEESS 

among you that does not sadly remember that his 
country, too, furnishes us with bitter commentaries 
on this truth ; and we are not exempt from the dan- 
gers common to mortals. Yet as was indicated just 
now, the patria of us, moderns, ought to consist in a 
wide land covered by a nation, and not in a city or 
a little colony. Mankind have outgrown the ancient 
city-state. Countries are the orchards and the broad 
acres where modern civilization gathers her grain 
and nutritious fruits. The narrow garden-beds of 
antiquity suffice for our widened humanity, no more 
than the short existence of ancient states. Moderns 
stand in need of nations and of national longevity, 
for theu" literatures and law, their industry, liberty, 
and patriotism ; we want countries to work and 
wiite and glow for, to live and to* die for. The 
sphere of humanity has steadily widened, and nations 
alone can now-a-days acquire the membership of that 
great commonwealth of our race which extends over 
Europe and America. Has it ever been sufficiently 
impressed on our minds how slender the threads are 
that unite us in a mere political system of states, if 
we are not tied together by the far stronger cords of 
those feelings which arise from the consciousness of 
having a country to cHng to and to pray for, and 
unimpeded land and water roads to move on ? 

Should we, then, not avail ourselves of so well 



OF MK. LIEBEE. 65 

proved a cultural means of fostering and promoting 
a generous nationality, as a comprehensive university 
is known to be? Shall we never have this noble 
pledge of our nationality ? All Athens, the choicest 
city-state of antiquity, may well be said to have been 
one great university, where masters daily met with 
masters, and shall we not have even one for our whole 
empire, which does not extend from bay to bay like 
httle Attica, but from sea to sea, and is destined one 
day to link ancient Europe to still older Asia, and 
thus to help completing the zone of civilization around 
the globe ? All that has been said of countries, and 
nations and a national university would retain its full 
force even if the threatened cleaving of this broad 
land should come upon us. But let me not enter on 
that topic of lowering political reality however 
near to every citizen's heart, when I am bidden by 
you to discourse on political philosophy, and it is 
meet for me not to leave the sphere of inaugural gen- 
eralities. 

Ladies and Gentlemeit ; 

This is the first time I am honored with address- 
ing a New York audience, and even if I could wholly 
dismiss from my mind the words of the Greek, so 
impressive in their simplicity : It is difficult to speak 
to those with whom we have not lived — even then I 



66 ADDKESS 

could not address you without some misgiving. Tlie 
topics on whicli I must discourse, may not be attract- 
ive to some of you, and they cover so extensive a 
ground, that I fear my speech may resemble the 
enumeration of the mile-stones that mark the way, 
rather than the description of a piece of road through 
cultivated plains or over haughty alps. I, therefore, 
beg for your indulgence, in all the candor in which 
this favor can be asked for at your hands. 

It is an error, as common in this country as it is 
great, that every branch of knowledge, if recognized 
as important or useful, is for that reason considered a 
necessary or desirable portion of the college course 
of studies. It is a serious error, but I do not beheve 
that it was committed by the Trustees when they 
established my chair. 

College education ought to be substantial and hberal. 
All instruction given in a generous college ought to 
aim at storing, strengthening, refining and awakening 
the head and heart. It ought to have for its object 
either direct information and positive transmission of 
knowledge, for the purpose of applying it in the 
walks of practical life, or in the later pursuits of 
truth ; or it ought to give the beginnings of knowledge 
and with them to infuse the longing to enter and tra- 
verse the fields which open before the student from the 
hill-top to which the teacher has led him ; or it ought 



OF ME. LEEBEE. 67 

to convey to Mm tlie method and skill of study — the 
scholar's art to which the ancient Vita hrevis ars 
longa applies as emphatically as to any other art ; or 
its tendency ought to be the general cultivation and 
embellishment of the mind, and the formation of a 
strong and sterling character, Truth and Truthfulness 
being the inscription on the mansion of all these 
endeavors. 

It is readily understood that all teaching must be 
within the intellectual reach of the instructed, but it 
is a grave mistake to su23pose that nothing should be 
placed before the pupil's mind, but what he can ac- 
tually comprehend in all its details. Life does not 
instruct us in this manner ; the bible does not teach 
us thus. There is a suggestive instruction, which 
though occasional, is nevertheless indispensable. It 
consists in thoughts and topics of an evocative char- 
acter, giving a foretaste and imparting hope. The 
power of stimulation is not restricted, for weal or 
woe, to definition. Suggestive and anticipating 
thoughts, wisely allowed to fall on the learner's mind, 
are like freighted sayings of the poet, instinctively re- 
cognized as pregnant words, although at the moment 
we cannot grasp theu' entire meaning. They fill us 
with affectionate suspicion. Napoleon was a master 
of the rhetoric of the camp, as Mackintosh calls it 
speaking of Elizabeth at Tilbury. His proclamations 



68 ADDEESS 

to the army are described to liave liad an elec- 
trifying effect on every soul in the camp, from the 
calculating engineer to the smallest drummer boy ; 
yet it is observed that every one of these proclama- 
tions, intended for immediate and du'ect effect, con- 
tains portions that cannot have been understood by 
his hosts. Are we then to suj)pose that these were 
idle effusions, escaped from his proud heart rather 
than dictated for a conscious purpose ? He that held 
his army in his hand as the ancient Caesars hold Vic- 
toria in their palm, always knew distinctly what he 
was about when his soldiers occupied his mind, and 
those portions which transcended the common intel- 
lect of the camp had, nevertheless, the inspiriting 
effect of foreshadowed glory, which the cold com- 
mander wanted to produce for the next day's strug- 
gle. The same laws operate in all spheres, according 
to different standards, and it is thus that quickening 
instruction ought not to be deprived of foretokening 
rays. 

Those branches which I teach are important, it 
seems, in all these respects and for every one, what- 
ever his pursuits in practical life may be. To me 
have been assigned the sciences which treat of man 
in his social relations, of humanity in all its phases 
in society. Society, as I use the term here, does not 
mean a certain number of living individuals bound 



^ 



OF MR. LIEBER. 69 

together by the bonds of common laws, interests, 
sympathies and organization, but it means these and 
the successive generations with which they are inter- y, 

linked, which have belons^ed to the same ss Q cioty and A^^' 
whose traditions the living have received, bocietyis ^^y^. / 
a continuity. Society is like a river. It is easy to say 
where the Ehine is, but can you say what it is at any 
given moment ? While you pronounce the word 
Mississippi, volumes of its waters have rolled into 
the everlasting sea, and new volumes have rushed 
into it from the northernmost lake Itaska, and 
all its vying tributaries. Yet it remains the Missis- 
sippi. While you pronounce the word America, 
some of your fellow-beings breathe their last, and new 
ones are born into your society. It remains your 
society. How else could I, in justice, be called upon 
to obey laws, made by lawgivers before I was born 
and who therefore could not, by any theory or con- 
struction, represent me individually ? I was not, and 
therefore had neither rights nor obligations. But my 
society existed and it exists stiU, and those are, until 
repealed, the laws of my society. Society is not ar- 
bitrarily made up by men, but man is born into 
society ; and that science which treats of men in their 
social relations in the past, and of that which has 
successively affected their society, for weal or woe, is 
history. Schloezer, one of the first who gave curren- 



70 ADDEESS 

cy to the word Statistik, of wMcli we have formed 
Statistics, with a somewhat narrower meaning, has 
well said. History is continuous Statistik; Statistik, 
History arrested at any given period. 

The variety of interests and facts and deeds which 
history deals with, and the dignity which surrounds 
this science, for it is the dignity of humanity itself 
in all its aspirations and its sufferings, give to this 
branch of knowledge a peculiarly cultivating and en- 
larging character for the mind of the young. 

He that made man decreed him to be a social 
being, that should depend upon society for the devel- 
opment of his purest feelings, highest thoughts and 
even of his very individuality, as well as for his ad- 
vancement, safety and sustenance ; and for this purpose 
He did not only ordain, as an elementary principle, 
that the dependence of the young of man, and they 
alone of all mammals, on the protection of the pa- 
rents, should outlast by many years the period of 
lactation ; and endowed him with a love and instinct 
of association ; and did not only make the principle 
of mutual dependence an all-pervading one, acting 
with greater intensity as men advance ; but He also 
implanted in the breast of every human being a yearn- 
ing to know what has happened to those that have 
passed before him, and to let those that will come 
after him know what has befallen him and what he 



OF ]Vm. LIEBEE. 71 

may liave achieved — the love of chronicling and 
reading chronicles. Man instinctively shows the 
continuity of society long before the philosopher 
enounces it. The very savage honors the old men 
that can tell of their fathers and of their fathers' 
fathers, and tries his hand at record in the cairn that 
is to tell a story to his children's children. Why do 
the lonely Icelanders pass their uninterrupted night 
of whole months in copying Norman chronicles ? 

As societies rise the desire to know the past as a 
continuous whole becomes more distinct and the 
uses of this knowledge become clearer; the desire 
becomes careful inquiry and collection ; mere Asiatic 
reception of what is given changes into Greek criti- 
cism; the love to inform future generations becomes 
a skill to represent, until history, with the zeal of re- 
search, the penetration of analysis, the art and com- 
prehension of representing, and the probity of truth, 
is seen as the stateliest of all the muses. 

So soon as man leaves the immediate interests of 
the day and contemplates the past, or plans for future 
generations and feels a common aifection with them, 
he rises to an ennobling elevation. There is no more 
nutritious pabulum to rear strong characters u]3on 
than History, and all men of action have loved it. 
The great Chatham habitually repaired to Plutarch 
in his spare half-hours — he had not many — and with 



T2 ADDEESS 

Ills own hands lie prescribed Thucydides as one of 
the best books for his son to read and re-read in his 
early youth. The biographer of Pitt tells ns that 
while at Cambridge he was in the habit of copying 
long passages from Thucydides the better to impress 
them on his mind, as Demosthenes before him had 
copied the whole. Thucydides is nourishing food. 
When we read one of our best historical books, when 
we allow a Motley to lead us through the struggle of 
the Netherlands, do we not feel in a frame of mind 
similar to that which the traveler remembers when he 
left the noisy streets of Eome, with the creaking wine- 
carts and the screaming street traffic, and enters the 
Vatican, where the silent, long array of lasting master- 
works awaits him ? Even the contemplation of crime 
on the stage of history has its dignity as its contem- 
plation on the stage of Shakespeare has. The real 
science and art of history is the child of periods of 
action. JSTo puny time has produced great historians. 
Historians grow in virile periods, and if a Tacitus 
wrote under the corrupt empire it was Rome in her 
manhood that yet lived in him and made him the 
strong historian we honor in that great name. His 
very despondency is great and he wrote his history 
by the light which yet lingered behind the setting of 
Koman grandeur. 

There are reasons which make the study of history 



OF ME. LIEBEE. ^3 

peculiarly important iii our own clay and in our own 
country. Not only is our age graced with a rare 
array of Idstorians in Europe and in our hemisphere — 
I need hardly mention Niebuhr, Ranke, and Neander, 
and Guizot, and Sismondi, Hallam, Macaulay, and the 
noble Grote, and Prescott and Bancroft — but, as it 
always happens when a science is pursued with re- 
newed vigor and sharpened interest, schools have 
sprung up which in theii* one-sided eagerness have 
fallen into serious errors. There was a time when 
the greatest sagacity of the historian was beheved to 
consist in deriving events of historic magnitude from 
insignificant causes or accidents, and when the lovers 
of progress believed that mankind must forget the 
past and begin entii'ely new. These errors produced '^/ 
in turn their opposites. The so-called historical 
school sprung up, which seems to believe that no- 
thing can be right but what has been, and that all that 
has been is therefore right, sacrificing right and jus- 
tice, freedom, truth and wisdom at the shrine of Pre- 
cedent and at the altar of Fact. They forget that 
in truth theirs is the most revolutionary theory while 
they consider themselves the conservatives ; for what 
is new to-day will be fact to-morrow and, according 
to them, will thus have established its historical right. 
Another school has come into existence, sj)read at 
this time more widely than the other, and consider- 



Y4 ADDEESS 

ing itself the philosophical school by way of excel- 
lence. I mean those historians who seek the highest 
work of history in finding out a predetermined type 
of social development in each state and nation and 
in every race, reducing men to instinctive and invol- 
imtary beings and society to nothing higher than a 
bee-hive. They confound nature and her unchange- 
able types and unalterable periodicity, with the 
progress and development as well as relapses of 
associated free agents. In their eyes every series of 
events and every succession of facts becomes a neces- 
sity and a representative of national predestination. 
Almost everything is considered a symbol of the mys- 
terious current of nationality, and all of us have late- 
ly read how the palaces of a great capital were 
conveniently proclaimed from an imperial throne to 
be the self-symbolizations of a nation in'stinctively 
intent on centralized unity. It is the school peculiar- 
ly in favor with modern, brilliant and not always un- 
enlightened absolutism; for, it strikes individuality 
from the hst of our attributes, and individuality in- 
commodes absolutism. It is the school which strips 
society of its moral and therefore responsible charac- 
ter, and has led with us to the doctrine of manifest des- 
tiny, as if any destiny of man could be more manifest 
than that of doing right, above all things, and of being 
man indeed. The error into which this school has 



OF ME. LIEBEE. 75 

relapsed is not dissimilar to that which prevailed 
regarding ethics with the Greeks before they had 
clearly separated, in their minds, the laws of nature 
with their unbending necessity from the moral laws, 
and which is portrayed with fearful earnestness in 
the legend of (Edipus. 

Closely akin in historic ethics to the theory of his- 
torical necessity is the base theory of success. We are 
told, and unfortunately by very many that pretend 
to take philosophic views, that success proves justice; 
that the unsuccessful cause proves by the want of 
success its want of right. It is a convenient theory 
for the tyrant ; but it is forgotten that if mere pre- 
vailance of power over antagonists constitutes success, 
and success proves the right of the successful, the 
unpunished robber or the deceiver who can not be 
reached *i:e justified. We are not told what length 
of time constitutes success. If there had been a 
Moniteur de Rome in the second century of our era, 
Christianity must have been represented as a very 
unsuccessful movement. Nor are we allowed to for- 
get the strong lesson of history that no great idea, 
no institution of any magnitude has ever prevailed 
except after long stiTiggles and unsuccessful attempts.* 

The conscientious teacher must guard the young 

* Connected with this error, again, is the theory of Representative Men, 
which seems to be in great favor at the present time, and is carried to a re- 



76 ADDEESS 

against tlie blandisliments of tliese schools ; lie must 
cultivate in tlie young tlie deliglit of discovering tlie 
genesis of things, whicli for great purposes was infused 
into our souls ; but he must show with lasting effect, 
that growth in history however well traced, however 

markable degree of extravagance even by men who have otherwise acquired 
deserved distinction. One of the most prominent philosophers of France 
has gone so far as to say that the leading military genius of an age is its 
highest representative — a position wholly at variance with history and utterly 
untenable by argument. The philosopher Hegel had said nearly the same thing 
before him. It would be absurd to say that Hannibal was the representative of 
his age, yet he was pre-eminently its military genius. Those are the greatest of 
men that are in advance of their fellow-beings and raise them up to their own 
height. Whom did Charlemagne represent? The question whom and what 
did those men represent that have been called representative men, and at 
what time of their lives were they such, are questions which present them- 
selves at once at the mention of this term. An English judge who once for 
all has settled by his decision a point of elementary importance to individual 
liberty, so that his opinion and his decision now form part and parcel of the 
very constitution of his country, is to be considered far more a representa- 
tive of the spirit of the English people than Cromwell was when he divided 
England into military districts, and established a government which broke 
down the moment he breathed his last. The greater portion of those men 
who are called representative men have reached their historical eminence by 
measures consisting in a mixture of violence, compression, and, generally, of 
fraud ; they cannot, therefore, have represented those against whom the vio- 
lence was used, and little observation is required to know that organized force 
or a well organized hierarchy can readily obtain a victory over a vastly 
greater majority that is not organized. The twenty or thirty organized men 
at Sing-Sing, who keep many hundred prisoners, insulated by silence, in sub- 
mission, cannot be called the repi-esentative men of the penitentiary. Nor 
must it be forgotten that the Bad and the Criminal can be concentrated in 
a leader and represented by him, just as well as that which is good and sub- 
stantial. Such as the idea of representative men is now floating in the minds 
of men, it is the result, in a great measure, of that unphilosophical coarseness 
which places the Palpable, the Vast and the Rapid above the silent and sub- 
stantial genesis of things and ideas, thus leading to the fatal error of regard- 
ing destruction more than growth. Destruction is rapid and violent ; growth 
is slow and silent. The naturalists have divested themselves of this barba- 



OF ME. LIEBER. TY 

delightful in tracing, however instructive and how- 
ever enriching our associations, is not on that account 
alone a genesis with its own internal moral necessity, 
and does not on that account alone have a prescrib- 
ing power for a future line of action. I have dwelt 
upon this subject somewhat at length, but those will 
pardon me who know to what almost inconceivable 
degree these errors are at present carried even by 
some men otherwise not destitute of a comprehensive 
grasp of mind. 

If what I have said of the nourishing character 
inherent in the study of history is true ; if history 
favors the growth of strong men and is cherished 
in turn by them, and grows upon their affection 
as extended experience and slowly advancing years 
make many objects of interest drop like leaves, one by 
one ; if history shows us the great connection of 
things, that there is nothing stable but the Progress- 
ive, and that there is Alfred and Socrates, Marathon 
and Tours, or, if it be not quaint to express it thus, 
that there is the microcosm of the whole past in each 
of us ; and if history familiarizes the mind with the 
idea that it is a jury whose verdict is not rendered ac- 
cording to the special pleadings of party dogmas, and 
a logic violently wrenched from truth and right — 
then it is obvious that in a moral, practical and intel- 
lectual point of view it is the very science for nascent 



T8 ADDEESS 

citizens of a republic. Tliere are not a few among 
US, who are dazzled "by tlie despotism of a Caesar, ap- 
pearing brilliant at least at a distance — did not even 
Plato set, once, Ms hopes on Dionysius ? — or are mis- 
led by the plausible simplicity of democratic abso- 
lutism, that despotism which believes liberty simply 
to consist in the irresponsible power of a larger num- 
ber over a smaller, for no other reason, it seems, than 
that ten is more than nine. All absolutism, whether 
monarchical or democratic, is in principle the same, 
and the latter always leads by short transitions to the 
other. We may go farther ; in all absolutism there is 
a strong element of communism. The theory of pro- 
perty which Louis the Fourteenth put forth was es- 
sentially communistic. There is no other civil liberty 
than institutional liberty, all else is but passing sem- 
blance and simulation. It is one of our highest duties, 
therefore, to foster in the young an institutional spirit, 
and an earnest study of history shows the inestimable 
value of institutions. We need not fear in our eager 
age and country that we may be led to an idolatry of 
the past — ^history carries sufficient preventives within 
itself — or to a worship of institutions simply because 
they are institutions. Institutions like the sons of 
men themselves may be wicked or good ; but it is true 
that ideas and feelings, however great or pure, retain 
a passing and meteoric character so long as they are 



OF ME. LIEBEK. Y9 

not embodied in vital institutions, and tliat riglits and 
privileges are but slender reeds so long as tliey are 
not protected and kept alive by sound and tenacious 
institutions; and it is equally true that an institu- 
tional spirit is fostered and invigorated by a manly 
study of society in tbe days tbat are gone. 

A wise study of the past teaches us social analysis, 
and to separate the permanent and essential from the 
accidental and superficial, so that it becomes one of 
the keys by which we learn to understand better the 
present. History, indeed, is an admirable training in 
the great duty of attention and the art of observa- 
tion, as in turn an earnest observation of the present 
is an indispensable aid to the historian. A practical 
life is a key with which we unlock the vaults contain- 
ing the riches of the past. Many of the greatest his- 
torians in antiquity and modern times have been 
statesmen; and Niebuhr said that with his learn- 
ing, and it was prodigious, he could not have un- 
derstood Roman history, had he not been for many 
years a practical officer in the financial and other de- 
partments of the administration, while we all remem- 
ber Gibbon's statement of himself, that the cap- 
tain of the Hampshire mihtia was of service to the 
historian of Rome. This is the reason why free na- 
tions produce practical, penetrating and um-a veiling 
historians, for in them every observing citizen par- 



80 ADDEESS 

takes, in a manner, of statesmanship. Free countries 
fm-nish ns with daily lessons in the anatomy of states 
and society ; they make us comprehend the reality of 
history. But we have dwelled sufficiently long on 
this branch. 

As Helicon, where Clio dwelt, looked down in all 
its grandeur on the busy gulf and on the chaffering 
traffic of Corinth, so let us leave the summit and 
walk down to Crissa, and cross the isthmus and enter 
the noisy mart where the productions of men are 
exchanged. Sudden as the change may be, it only 
symbohzes reality and human life. What else is the 
main portion of history but a true and wise account 
of the high events and ruling facts which have re- 
sulted from the combined action of the elements of 
human life ? Who does not know that national life 
consists in the gathered sheaves of the thousand ac- 
tivities of men, and that production and exchange 
are at all times among the elements of these activi- 
ties? 

Man is always an exchanging being. Exchange is 
one of those characteristics without which we never 
find man, though they may be observable only in 
their lowest incipiency, and with which we never find 
the animal, though its sagacity may have reached the 
highest point. As, from the hideous tattooing of the 
savage to our dainty adornment of the sea-cleaving 



OF MR. LIBBER. 81 

prow or the creations of a Crawford, men always mani- 
fest that there is the affection of the beautiful in them 
— that they are sesthetical beings ; or as they always 
show that they are religious beings, whether they 
prostrate themselves * before a fetish or bend their 
knee before their true and unseen God, and the animal 
never, so we find man, whether Caffi'e, Phoenician or 
American, always a producing and exchanging being ; 
and we observe that this, as all other attributes, steadi- 
ly increases in intensity with advancing civilization. 

There are three laws on which man's material 
well-being and, in a very great measure, his civiliza- 
tion are founded. Man is placed on this earth ap- 
parently more destitute and helpless than any other 
animal. Man is no finding animal — he must produce. 
He must produce his food, his raiment, his shelter 
and his comfort. He must produce his arrow and his 
trap, his canoe and his field, his road and his lamp. 

Men are so constituted that they have far more 
wants, and can enjoy the satisfying of them more in- 
tensely, than other animals ; and while these many 
wants are of a peculiar uniformity among all men, the 
fitness of the earth to provide for them is greatly di- 
versified and locally restricted, so that men must pro- 
duce, each more than he wants for himself, and 
exchange their products. All human palates are 
pleasantly affected by saccharine salts, so much so that 



82 ADDRESS 

tlie.word sweet has been carried over, in all languages, 
into different and higher spheres, where it has ceased 
to be a trope and now designates the dearest and even 
the holiest affections. All men understand what is 
meant by sweet music and sweet* wife, because the ma- 
terial pleasure whence the term is derived is universal. 
All men of all ages relish sugar, but those regions 
which produce it are readily numbered. This applies 
to the far greater part of all materials in constant de- 
mand among men, and it applies to the narrowest 
circles as to the widest. The inhabitant of the popu- 
lous city does not cease to relish and stand in need of 
farinaceous substances though his crowded streets can- 
not produce grain, and the farmer who provides him 
with grain does not cease to stand in need of iron or 
oil which the town may procure for him from a dis- 
tance. With what remarkable avidity the tribes of 
IS'egroland, that had never been touched even by the 
last points of the creeping fibres of civilization, long- 
ed for the articles lately carried thither by Barth and 
his companions ! The brute animal has no dormant 
desires of this kind, and finds around itself what it 
stands in need of. This apparent cruelty, although a 
real blessing to man, deserves to be made a prominent 
topic in natural theology. 

Lastly, the wants of men — I speak of their material 
and cultural wants, the latter of which are as urgent 



OF MR. LIEBEE. 83 

and fully as legitimate as the former — infinitely in- 
crease and are by Providence decreed to increase 
with advancing civilization ; so that his progress ne- 
cessitates intenser production and quickened exchange. 
The branch which treats of the necessity, nature, and 
effects, the promotion and the hindrances of produc- 
tion, whether it be based almost exclusively on appro- 
priation, as the fishery ; or on coercing nature to fur- 
nish us with better and more abundant fruit than she is 
willing spontaneously to yield, as agriculture ; or in 
fashioning, separating and combining substances which 
other branches of industry obtain and collect, as 
manufacture ; or on carrying the products from the 
spot of production to the place of consumption ; and 
the character Avhich all these products acquire by 
exchange, as values, with the labor and services for 
which again products are given in exchange, this di- 
vision of knowledge is called political economy — 
an unfit name ; but it is the name, and we use it. 
Political economy, like every other of the new sci- 
ences, was obliged to fight its way to a fair acknowl- 
edgment, against all manners of prejudices. The in- 
troductory lecture which archbishop Whately deliv- 
ered some thirty years ago, when he commenced his 
course on political economy in the university of Ox- 
ford, consists almost wholly of a defense of his sci- 
ence and an encounter with the objections then made 



84 ADDEESS 

to it on religious, moral, and almost on every ground 
tliat could be made by ingenuity, or was suggested by 
tlie misconception of its aims. Political economy fared, 
in tMs respect, like vaccination, like the taking of a 
nation's census, like tlie discontinuance of witck-trials. 
The economist stands now on clearer ground. 
Opponents have acknowledged their errors, and the 
economists themselves fall no longer into the faults of 
the utilitarian. The economist indeed sees that the 
material interests of men are of the greatest import- 
ance, and that modern civilization, in all its aspects, 
requires an immense amount of wealth, and conse- 
quently increasing exertion and production, but he 
acknowledges that " what men can do the least with- 
out is not their highest need."^* He knows that we 
are bid to pray for our daily bread, but not for 
bread alone, and I am glad that those who bade 
me teach Political Economy, assigned to me also 
Political Philosophy and History. They teach 
that the periods of national dignity and highest 
endeavors have sometimes been periods of want 
and poverty. They teach abundantly that riches and 
enfeebling comforts, that the flow of wine or costly 
tapestry, do not lead to the development of humanity, 
nor are its tokens ; that no barbarism is coarser than 

* Professor Lushington in his Inaugural Lecture, in Glasgow, quoted in Mo- 
r ell's Hist, and Crit. View of Specul. Phil. London, 1846. 



OF MR. LIEBER. 85 

tlie substitution of gross expensiveness for what is 
beautiful and graceful ; that it is manly character, 
and womanly soulfulness, not gilded upholstery or 
fretful fashion — ^that it is the love of truth and justice, 
directness and tenacity of purpose, a love of right, of 
fairness and freedom, a self-sacrificing public spirit 
and religious sincerity, that lead nations to noble 
places in history ; not surfeiting feasts or conven- 
tional refinement. The Babylonians have tried that 
road before us. 

But political economy, far from teaching the hoard- 
ins: of riches, shows the laws of accumulation and 
distribution of wealth ; it shows the important truth 
that mankind at large can become and have become 
wealthier, and must steadily increase their wealth with 
expanding culture. 

It is, nevertheless, true that here, in the most active 
market of our whole hemisphere, I have met, more 
frequently than in any other place, with an objection 
to political economy, on the part of those who claim 
for themselves the name of men of business. They 
often say that they alone can know anything about 
it, and as often ask : what is Political Economy good 
for ? The soldier, though he may have fought in the 
thickest of the fight, is not on that account the best 
judge of the disposition, the aim, the movements, the 
faults or the great conceptions of a battle, nor can 



86 ADDEESS \ 

we call tlie infliction of a deep wound a profound 
lesson in anatomy. 

What is Political Economy good for ? It is like 
every other branch truthfully pursued, good for lead- 
ing gradually nearer and nearer to the truth ; for 
making men, in its own sphere, that is the vast sphere 
of exchange, what Cicero calls mansuet% and for 
clearing more and more away what may be termed the 
impeding and sometimes savage superstitions of trade 
and intercourse ; it is, like every other pursuit of po- 
litical science of which it is but a branch, good for 
sending some light, through the means of those that 
cultivate it as their own science, to the most distant 
corners, and to those who have perhaps not even 
heard of its name. 

Let me give you two simple facts — one of com- 
manding and historic magnitude ; the other of appar- 
ent insignificance, but typical of an entire state of 
things, incalculably important. 

Down to Adam Smith, the greatest statesmanship 
had always been sought for in the depression of neigh- 
boring nations. Even a Bacon considered it self-evi- 
dent that the enriching of one people implies the 
impoverishing of another. This maxim runs through 
all history, Asiatic and European, down to the latter 
part of the last centmy. Then came a Scottish pro- 
fessor who dared to teach, in his dingy lecture-room 



OF MR. LIEBEK. 8*7 

at Edinburgli, contrary to the opinion of the whole 
world, that every man, even were it but for egotistic 
reasons, is interested in the prosperity of his neigh- 
bors ; that his wealth, if it be the result of produc- 
tion and exchange, is not a withdrawal of money 
from others, and that, as with single men so with en- 
tire nations — ^the more prosperous the one so much 
the better for the other. And his teaching, like that 
of another professor before him — the immortal Gro- 
tius — went forth, and rose above men and nations, 
and statesmen and kings; it ruled their councils 
and led the history of our race into new channels ; 
it bade men adopt the angels' greeting : " Peace on 
earth and good will towards men," as a maxim of 
high statesmanship and political shrewdness. Thus 
rules the mind ; thus sways science. There is now 
no intercourse between civilized nations which is not 
tinctured by Smith and Grotius. And what I am, what 
you are, what every man of our race is in the middle 
of the nineteenth century, he owes it in part to Adam 
Smith, as well as to Grotius, and Aristotle, and 
Shakespeare, and every other leader of humanity. 
Let us count the years since that Scottish profess- 
or, with his common name. Smith, proclaimed his 
swaying truth, very simple when once pronounced ; 
very fearful as long as unacknowledged; a very 
blessing when in action ; and then let us answer. 



88 ADDEESS 

What Las Political Economy done for man? We ha- 
bitually dilate on the effect of physical sciences, and 
especially on their application to the useful arts in 
modern times. All honor to this characteristic fea- 
ture of our age — the wedlock of knowledge and 
labor ; but it is, nevertheless, true that none of the 
new sciences have so deeply affected the course of 
human events as political economy. I am speaking 
as an historian and wish to assert facts. What I say 
is not meant as rhetorical fringe. 

The other fact alluded to, is one of those historical 
pulsations which indicate to the touch of the inquirer, 
the condition of an entire living organism. When a 
few weeks ago the widely spread misery in the manu- 
facturing districts of England was spoken of in the 
British house of lords, one that has been at the helm,* 
concluded his speech with an avowal that the suffer- 
ing laborers who could find but half days', nay, quar- 
ter days' employment, with unreduced wants of their 
families, nevertheless had resorted to no violence, but 
on the contrary universally acknowledged that they 
knew full well, that a factory can not be kept work- 
ing unless the master can work to a profit. 

This too is very simple, almost trivial, when stated. 
But those who know the chronicles of the medieval 

* Lord Derby, then in the opposition, and since made premier again. 



OF ME. LIEBEE. 89 

cities, and of modern times down to a period which 
most of us recollect, know also that in all former days 
the distressed laborer would first of all have resort- 
ed to a still greater increase of distress, by violence 
and destruction. The first feeling of uninstructed 
man, produced by suffering, is vengeance, and that 
vengeance is wreaked on the nearest object or person ; 
as animals bite, when in pain, what is nearest within 
reach. What has wrought this change ? Who, or 
what has restrained our own sorely distressed popu- 
lation from blind violence, even though unwise words 
were officially addressed to them, when under similar 
circumstances in the times of free Florence or Cologne 
there would have been a sanguinary rising of the 
"wool-weavers," if it is not a sounder knowledge and 
a correcter feeling regarding the relations of wealth, 
of capital and labor, which in spite of the absurdities 
of communism has penetrated in some degree all lay- 
ers of society ? And which is the source whence this 
tem]3ering knowledge has welled forth, if not Politic- 
al Economy? 

True indeed, we are told that economists do not 
agree ; some are for protection, some for free trade. 
But are physicians agreed ? And is there no science 
and art of medicine ? Are theologians agreed ? Are 
the cultivators of any branch of knowledge fully 
agreed, and are all the beneficial effects of the sci- 



90 ADDEESS 

ences debarred by this disagreement of their followers ? 
But, however important at certain periods the differ- 
ence between protectionists and free-traders may be, 
it touches, after all, but a small portion of the bulk 
of truth taught by Political Economy, and I believe 
that there is a greater uniformity of opinion, and a 
more essential agreement among the prominent scho- 
lars of this science, than among those of others ex- 
cepting, as a matter of course, the mathematics. 

If it is now generally acknowledged that Political 
Economy ought not to be omitted in a course of su- 
perior education, all the reasons apply with greater 
force to that branch which treats of the relations of 
man as a jural being — as citizen, and most especially so 
in our own country, where individual political liberty 
is enjoyed in a degree in which it has never been en- 
joyed before. Nowhere is political action carried to a 
greater intensity, and nowhere is the calming effect 
of an earnest and scientific treatment of politics more 
necessary. In few countries is man more exposed to 
the danger of being carried away to the worship of 
false political gods and to the idolatry of party, than 
in our land, and nowhere is it more necessary to show 
to the young the landmarks of political truth, and 
the essential character of civil liberty — the grave and 
binding duties that man imposes upon himself when 
he proudly assumes self-government. Nowhere seem 



OF ME. LIEBEK. , 91 

to be SO many persons acting on the supposition tliat 
we differ from all other men, and that the same 
deviations will not produce the same calamities, and 
nowhere does it seem to be more necessary to teach 
what might well be called political physiology and 
political pathology. In no sphere of action does it 
seem to me more necessary than in politics, to 
teach and impress the truth that " logic without rea- 
son is a fearful thing." Aristotle said : The fellest of 
things is armed injustice ; History knows a feller thing 
— impassioned reasoning without a pure heart in him 
that has power in a free country — the poisoning of 
the well of political truth itself. Every youth ought 
to enter the practical life of the citizen, and every 
citizen ought to remain through life, deeply impressed 
with the conviction that, as Vauvemague very nobly 
said, " great thoughts come from the heart," so 'great 
politics come from sincere ]3atriotism, and that with- 
out candid and intelligent public spirit, parties with- 
out which no liberty can exist, will raise themselves 
into ends and objects instead of remaining mere 
means. And when the words party, party consistency 
and party honor are substituted for the word Country, 
and, as Thucydides has it, when parties use, each its 
own language, and men cease to understand one anoth- 
er, a country soon falls into that state in which a court 
of justice would find itself where wrangling plead- 



92 ADDEESS 

ers should do tlieir work without the tempering, 
guiding judge — that state of dissolution which is the 
next step to entire disintegration. Providence has 
no special laws for special countries, and it is not only 
true what Talleyrand said : Tout arrive ; but every- 
thing happens over again. There is no truth, short 
of the multiplication table, that, at some time or 
other, is not drawn into doubt again, and must be 
re-asserted and re-proved. 

One of the means to insure the difficult existence 
of liberty — far more difficult than that of absolutism, 
because of an infinitely more delicate organization — 
is the earnest bringing up of the young in the path 
of political truth and justice, the necessity of which 
is increased by the reflection that in our period of 
large cities, man has to solve, for the first time in his- 
tory, the problem of making a high degree of general 
and individual liberty compatible with populous 
cities. It is one of the highest problems of our race, 
which cannot yet be said to have been solved. 

Political philosophy is a branch of knowledge that 
ought not only to be taught in colleges ; its funda- 
mental truths ought to be ingrained in the minds of 
every one that helps to crowd your pubhc schools. 
Is it objected that political philosophy ranges too 
high for boyish intellects ? What ranges higher, 
what is of so spiritual a character as Christianity? 



OF ME. LIEBER. 93 

Bat tills lias not prevented the clmrcli, at any period 
of her existence, from putting catechisms of a few 
pages into the hands of boys and girls, so that they 

could read. 

We have, however, direct authority for what 
has been advanced. The Eomans in their best pe- 
riod made every school-boy learn by heart the XII 
Tables, and the XII Tables were the catechism of 
Koman public and private law, of their constitution 
and of the proud Jus Quiritium, that led the Koman 
citizen to pronounce so confidently, as a vox et invo- 
cation his Civis Romanus sum in the most distant cor- 
ners of the land, and which the captive apostle col- 
lectedly asserted twice before the provincial officers. 
Cicero says that when he was a boy, he learned the 
XII Tables ut cavmen necessarium, like an indispens- 
able formulary, a political breviary, and deplores 
that at the time when he was composing his treatise 
on the laws, m which he mentions the fact, the 
practice was falling into disuse. Rome was fast 
drifting to Csesarean absolutism ; what use was there 
any longer for a knowledge of fundamental prin- 
ciples ? 

The Eomans were not visionary; they were no 
theorists ; no logical symmetry or love of system ever 
prevented them from being straightforward and 
even stern practical men. They were men of singu- 



94 ADDEESS 

lar directness of purpose and language. Abstraction 
did not suit tliem well. Those Romans, wlio loved 
law and delighted in rearing institutions and building 
high, roads and aqueducts ; wlio could not only con- 
quer, but could liold fast to, and fasMon wliat they 
had conquered, and who strewed municipalities over 
their conquests, which, after centuries, became the 
germs of a new political civilization ; who reared a 
system of laws which conquered the west and their 
own conquerors, when the Roman sword had become 
dull ; and who impressed, even through the lapse of 
ages, a practical spirit on the Latin Church, which 
visibly distinguishes it from the Greek; those Ro- 
mans who declared their own citizens with all the Jus 
Romanum on them, when once enrolled, the slaves 
of the general, and subjected them to a merciless 
whip of iron chains ; those Romans who could make 
foreign kings assiduous subjects, and foreign hordes 
fight well by the side of their own veterans, and 
who could be dispassionately cruel when they thought 
that cruelty was useful; those Romans who were 
practical if there ever was a practical people, bade 
their schoolmaster to drive the XII Tables into the 
stubborn minds of the little feUows who, in their 
turn, were to become the ruling citizens of the 
ruling commonwealth, and we know, from sculp- 
tural and written records, in prose and metre, that 



OF MR. LIEBER. 95 

the magistral. means in teaching that carmen necessa- 
riuni was not always applied to the head alone. 

Let us pass to another authority, though it require 
a historic bound — ^to John Milton, whose name is 
high among the names of men, as that of Rome is 
great among the states of the earth. Milton who 
wrote as clear and dii'ect prose, as he sang lofty poet- 
ry, who was one of the first and best writers on the 
liberty of the press against his own party, and who 
consciously and readily sacrificed his very eyesight 
to his country — Milton says, in his paper on Educa- 
tion, dedicated to Master Hartlib,* that, after having 



* Mr. Evert A. Duyckinck, of this city, whom, while writing out this ad- 
dress, I had asked what he knew of " Master Hartlib," obligingly replied by a 
note, of which I may be permitted to give the following extract: 

" In D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, Hartlib is called a Pole. Thomas 
Wharton, in a note in his edition of Milton's Minor Poems, says Hartlib was 
a native of Holland, and came into England about the year 1640. Hartlib 
himself tells us in a letter, dated 1660, (reprinted in Egerton Brydges' Curi- 
osa Literaria, III. 54) that his father was a Polish merchant who founded a 
church in Pomania, and, when the Jesuits prevailed in Poland, removed to 
Elbing, to which place his (Samuel Hartlib's) grandfather brought the English 
company of merchants from Dantzic. It would appear that HartUb was born 
at Elbing, for he speaks of his father marrying a third wife (H.'s mother) after 
the removal from Poland proper, which third wife would appear to have been 
an English woman. Hartlib speaks of his family being ' of a very ancient 
extraction ia the German empire, there having been ten brethren of the name 
of Hartlib, some of them Privy Councillors to the Emperor.' Hartlib's mer- 
cantile life, I suppose, brought him to England. He was a reformer in Church 
matters, and became attached to the Parliament. ' Hartlib,' says Wharton, 
' took great pains to frame a new system of education, answerable to the per- 
fection and purity of the new commonwealth.' Milton addressed his Treatise 
on Education to him about 1650. In 1662 Hartlib petitioned Parhament 
for relief, stating that he had been thirty years and upwards serving the state 
and specially setting forth the ' erecting a little academy for the education 



96 ADDEESS 

taught sundry other branches in a boy's education, 
" the next removal must be to the study of politics, to 
know the beginning, end and reasons of political soci- 
eties, that they (the learners) may not, in a dangerous 
fit of the commonwealth, be such poor, shaken, un- 
certain reeds, of such a tottering conscience, as many 
of our great counsellors have lately shown them- 
selves, but steadfast pillars of the state." This preg- 
nant passage ought not to have been written in vain. 

I could multiply authorities of antiquity and 
modern times, but is not, Rome and Milton, strong 
enough ? 

A complete course of political philosophy, to 
which every course, whether in a college or a uni- 
versity, ought to approximate, as time and circum- 
stances permit, should wind its way through the 
large field of political science somewhat in the fol- 
lowing manner. 

of the gentry of this nation, to advance piety, learning, morality and other ex- 
ercises of industry, not usual then in common schools.' His other services 
were ' correspondence with the chief of note of foreign parts,' ' collecting 
MSS. in all the parts of learning,' printing ' the best experiments of indus- 
try in Husbandry and Manufactures,' relieving 'poor, distressed scholars, 
both foreigners and of this nation.' " 

So far the extract from Mr. Duyckinck's letter. Hartlib was no doubt a Ger. 
man by extraction and education, and represents a type of men peculiar to the 
reformation, and of great importance in the cause of advancing humanity- 
Milton must have felt great regard for this foreigner, but Milton had too en. 
lightened a mind, and had learned too much in foreign parts, ever to allow a 
narrowing and provincial self-complacency to become a substitute for enlarg- 
ing and unselfish patriotism. 



OF ME. LIEBEE. 97 

We must start from the pregnant fact that 
eacli man is made an individual and a social 
being, and that his whole humanity with all its 
attributes, moral, religious, emotional, mental, cul- 
tural and industrial, is decreed forever to revolve 
between the two poles of individualism and socialism, 
taking the latter term in its strictly philosophical 
adaptation. Man's moral individuahsm and the sove- 
reign necessity of his living in society, or the fact that 
humanity and society are two ideas that cannot even 
be conceived of, the one without the other, lead to 
the twin ideas of Kight and Duty. Political science 
dwells upon this most important elementary truth, 
that the idea of right cannot be philosophically 
stated without the idea of obligation, nor that of 
duty without that of right, and it must show how 
calamitous every attempt has proved to separate 
them ; how debasing a thing obhgation becomes 
without corresponding rights, and how withering 
rights and privileges become to the hand that wields 
the power and to the fellow-being over whom it 
sways, if separated from corresponding duty and 
obligation. 

Eight and duty are twin brothers ; they are like 
the two electric flames appearing at the yard-arms 
in the Mediterranean, and were called by the ancient 
mariners Castor and Pollux. When both are visible, 

7 



98 ADDEESS 

a fair and pleasant conrse is expected ; but one alone 
portends stormy miscliief. An instinctive acknowl- 
edgment of this truth makes us repeat Witk plea- 
sure to tHs day tke old Frencli maxim, Noblesse 
oblige^ whatever annotations history may have to tell 
of its disregard.* 

That philosopher, whom Dante calls il maestro di 
color die sarmo^ and whom our science gratefully 
acknowledges as its own founder, says that man is 
by nature a poHtical animal. He saw that man can 
not divest himself of the State. Society, no matter 
in how rudimental a condition, always exists, and so- 
ciety considered with reference to rights and duties, 
to rules to be obeyed, and to privileges to be pro- 
tected, to those that ordain, and those that comply, 
is the pohtical state. Government was never voted 
into existence, and the state originates every day 
anew in the family. God coerces man into society,. 
and necessitates the growth of government by that 
divinely simple law, which has been alluded to before, 
and consists in making the young of man depend 
upon the parents for years after the period of lacta- 
tion has ceased. As men and society advance, the 
greatest of institutions — ^the State — ^increases in inten- 

* In this sense at least Noblesse oblige was often taken, that feudal privi- 
leges over feudal subjects involved obligations to them, although it meant 
originally the obligations due to him who bestowed the nobility. 



OF MR. LEEBER. 99 

sity of action, and wlien humanity falters back, the 
State, like the function of a diseased organ, becomes 
sluggish or acts with ruinous feverishness. In this 
twinship of right and duty lies the embryonic gene- 
sis of liberty, and at the same time the distinction 
between sincere and seasoned civil liberty, and the 
wild and one-sided privilege of one man or a class ; or 
the fantastic equality of all in point of rights with- 
out the steadying pendulum of mutual obligation. 

This leads us to that division which I have called 
elsewhere Political Ethics, in which the teacher will 
not fail to use his best efforts, when he discourses on 
patriotism — that ennobling virtue which at times has 
been derided, at other times declared incompati- 
ble with true philosophy or with pure religion. He 
will not teach that idolatrous patriotism which in- 
scribes on its banner, Our country, right or wrong, 
but that heightened public spirit, which loves and 
honors father and mother, and neighbors, and coun- 
try ; which makes us deeply feel for our country's 
glory and its faults ; makes us willing to die, and, 
what is often far more difficult, to live for it; that 
patriotism which is consistent with St. Paul's com- 
mand: Honor all men, and which can say with 
Montesquieu, "If I knew anything useful to my coun- 
try but prejudicial to Europe or mankind, I should 
consider it as a crime ;" that sentiment which made 



100 ADDEE53 

the Atlienians reject the secret of Themistocles, be- 
cause Ai'istides declared it very nsefiil to Atliens, 
bnt Ter J injurious to Sparta and to tlie other Grreeks. 
The chiistian citizen can say with Tertullian, Cwita-s 
nostra totU'S rmnidus^ and abhoi^ that patriotism 
which is at best bloated provincialism, but he 
knows, too, that that society is doomed to certain 
abasement in which the indifference of the hla-se 
is peiToitted to debilitate and demoralize public 
sentiment. The patriotism of which we stand as 
much ia need as the ancients, is neither an amiable 
weakness, nor the Hellenic pride. It is a positive 
virtue demanded of every moral man. It is the 
fervent love of our own country, but not hatred of 
others, nor blindness to our faults and to the rights 
or superiorities of our neighbors. 

We now approach that branch of our science 
which adds, to the knowledge of the " end and rea- 
sons of pohtical societies," the discussion of the means 
by which man endeavors to obtain the end or ought 
to obtain it ; in one word, to the science of govern- 
ment, and a knowledge of governments which exist 
and have existed. The " end and reasons of political 
societies" involve the main discussion of the object 
of the State, as it is more clearly discerned with ad- 
vancing civilization, the relation of the State to the 
family, its duties to the individual, and the necessary 



OF JIE. LLEBER. 101 

limits of its power. Protection, in the highest sense 
of the word,* both of society, as a whole, and of the 
component individuals, as such, without interference, 
and free from intermeddling, is the great object of 
the civilized State, or the State of freemen. To this 
portion of our science belong the great topics of the 
rights as well as the dependence of the individual 
citizen, of the woman and the child ; of primordial 
rights and the admissibility or violence of slavery, 
which, thi'oughout the whole course of history where- 
ever it has been introduced, has been a deciduous 
institution. The reflection on the duties of the State 
comprehends the important subjects of the necessity 
of pubhc education (the common school for those 
who are deprived of means, or destitute of the desire 
to be educated ; and the univemty, which hes beyond 
the capacity of private means); of the support of those 
who cannot support themselves (the pauper, and the 
poor orphans and sick) ; of intercommunication and 
intercommunion (the road and the mail) ; of the pro- 
motion of taste and the fine arts, and the public sup- 
port of religion, or the abstaining from it ; and the 
duty of settling conflicting claims, and of punishing 

* That I do not mean by this material protection only, but the protection 
of all interests, the highest no less so than the common ones, of society as- 
a unit, as well as of the individual human being, will be well known to the 
reader of my Political Ethics. I do by no means restrict the meaning of 
Protection to personal security, nor do I mean by this term something that 
amounts to the protection of an interest in one person to the injury of others. 



102 ADDEES9 

those that infringe the common rules of action, with 
the science and art of rightful and sensible punition, 
or, as I have ventured to call this branch, of penology. 
The comprehensive apparatus by which all these 
objects, more or less dimly seen, according to the 
existing stage of civil progress, are intended to be 
obtained, and by which a political society evolves its 
laws, is called government. I generally give at this 
stage a classification of all governments, in the present 
time or in the past, according to the main principles 
on which they rest. This naturally leads to three 
topics, the corresponding ones of which, in some 
other sciences, form but important illustrations or 
constitute a certain amount of interesting knowledge, 
but which in our science constitute part and par- 
cel of the branch itself. I mean a historical sur- 
vey of all governments and systems of law, Asiatic 
or European ; a survey of all political literature as 
represented by its prominent authors, from Aristotle 
and Plato, or from the Hindoo Menu, down to St. 
Simon or Calhoun — a portion of the science which 
necessarily includes many historians and theologians 
on the one hand, such as Mariana, De Soto and 
Machiavelh, and on the other hand statesmen that 
have poured forth wisdom or criminal theories in 
public speech, Demosthenes or Webster, Chatham, 
Burke, Mirabeau or Robespierre and St. Juste. And 



OF MK. LEEBEE. 103 

lastly, I mean that division of our science wliicli in- 
deed is, properly, a subdivision of the latter, but suf- 
ficiently important and instructive to be treated 
separately — a survey of those model states which 
political philosophers have from time to time imag- 
ined, and which we now call Utopias, from Plato's 
Atlantis to Thomas More's Utopia, Campanella's Civi- 
tas Solis or Harrington's Oceana to our socialists, or 
Shelley's and Coleridge's imaginings and the hallucina- 
tions of Comte. They are growing rarer and, proba- 
bly, will in time wholly cease. Superior minds, at any 
rate, could feel stimulated to conceive of so-called phi- 
losophical republics, in ages only when everything 
existing in a definite form — languages, mythologies, 
agriculture and governments — was ascribed to a cor- 
respondingly definite invention, or, at times, to an 
equally definite inspiration, and when society was 
not clearly conceived to be a continuity ; when far 
less attention was paid to the idea of progress, which 
is a succession of advancing steps, and to the historic 
genesis of institutions ; and when the truth was not 
broadly acknowledged that civilization, whether po- 
litical or not, cannot divest itself of its accumulative 
and progressive character. 

This Utopiology, if you permit me the name, will 
include those attempts at introducing, by sudden and 
volcanic action, entirely new governments resulting 



104 ADDEESS 

from some fanatical tlieory, sucli as the common- 
wealtli of tlie anabaptists in Germany, or the at- 
tempts of carrying out Rousseau's equalitarian hatred 
of representative government, by Marat and Callot 
d'Herbois. They have all been brief and bloody. 

When the teacher of political philosophy discourses 
on the first of these three divisions he will not omit 
to dwell on the communal governments and the later 
almost universal despotism, of Asia, which reduces 
the subject, both as to property and life, to a tenant 
at will ; he wiU dwell on the type of the city-state, 
prevailing in Grreek and Koman antiquity, and the 
strong admixture of communism in those states, espe- 
cially in the Greek ; he will show how that religion, 
whose founder proclaimed that his kingdom is not of 
this world, nevertheless affected all political organiza- 
tion far more than aught else has done, because, more 
than anything else, it affected the inner man, and that, 
in one respect, it intensified individuahsm, for it exalted 
the individual moral character and responsibility. In- 
dividual duties and individual rights received greater 
importance, and Christianity leveled all men before an 
omniscient Judge and a common Father. From the 
time when the worshiped emperor of Rome decreed 
that the christians, then confounded with the Jews, 
should depart from Italy, because, as Suetonius says, 
they were Christo i^npulsore tumultucmtes^ the Ro- 



OF ME. LIEBER. 105 

mans perceived that there was that in the christian 
which made him bow before a higher authority than 
that of the Caesars. " Christ impelling them, they 
are disturbers " — yet they obeyed the law, as Pliny, 
the governor, writes to his friend and emperor, only 
they could not be induced to strew the sacred meal 
on the altar of Jove, and Christianity wrought on in 
the breasts of men, until Julian loses the battle, and, 
as tradition at least says, exclaims in dying : " Oh 
Galilean, thou hast conquered 1" 

The teacher will dwell on that type of government 
which succeeded and is the opposite to the ancient 
city-state — the feudal system with its graduated 
and subdivided allegiance ; and he will show how at 
last the period of nationalization arrived for govern- 
ments and languages, and national governments, with 
direct and uniform allegiance, at last developed 
JH-u. selves and became the accompaniments of mod- 
ern civilization ; when real states were formed, com- 
pact governments extending over large territories. 
The ancients had but one word for state and city ; 
the mediaeval government is justly called a mere sys- 
tem (the feudal system) ; the moderns have states, 
whether unitary or confederated does not affect this 
point. 

When an account is given of the imaginary gov- 
ernments, which the greater or lesser philosophers 



106 ADDEESS 

have constructed as ideal polities, attention must be 
directed to tlie striking fact that all Utopists, from 
Plato to our times, have been more or less commu- 
nists, making war upon money, although so shrewd and 
wise a man as Thomas More was among them; and 
that most of these writers, even Campanella, though 
a priest of the catholic church, and all societies in 
which communism has been carried out to any extent, 
have made light of monogamic wedlock, or have open- 
ly proclaimed the community or a plurality of wives* 

* Auguste Comte, who was generally considered the most serious and 
most able atheist, yet known in the annals of science, as long as his Positive 
Philosophy was the only work that attracted attention, makes one of the 
exceptions. In his Catechism of Positive Religion, which belongs to the 
Utopian literature, proclaiming the regeneration and the reconstruction of all 
human society, and covering it with the aegis of a paper-system rubricked 
according to a priestly socialistic Csesarism, nevertheless acknowledges mono- 
gamy, and individual property in a considerable degree. The work, however, 
amply makes up for these omissions, by an incredible amount of inane vaga- 
ries, self-contradictions and that apotheosis of absolutism, " organizing " all 
things and allowing inherent life nowhere, which is the idol of Galilean sociolo- 
gists, as the fallen Romans burnt incense to the images of their emperors even 
while living, or rather as long as they lived ; for, so soon as the emperor was 
dead, his memory was often senatorially cursed, and his images were decreed 
to be broken. Power was the only thing left, when the introduction of the 
many thousands of gods, from the conquered countries, neutralized all sense 
of religion, and power was worshiped accordingly. The Suetoniana of the 
nineteenth century are not wholly dissimilar, 

Nothing has probably ever shown so strikingly the inherent religious char- 
acter of man as Comte's apotheosis of atheism, and his whole " catechism,'» 
sprinkled as it is with prayers to the *' supreme being," which being, to be 
sure, is void of being and cannot, therefore, very well be possessed of supre- 
macy. 

From time to time great men have declared what they considered the great- 
est of evils. Aristotle says, "The fellest of things is armed injustice." 
Bacon declares that the greatest of evils is the apotheosis of error ; but, 
somehow, men seem always to contrive to prove that there may be still 
greater evils. 



OF MR. LIEBEE. lOT 

We have our protestant counterpart to Campanella 
in the Rev. Martin Madan, the author of Thelyp- 
thora, a Defense of a Plurahty of Wives. Hostility 
to individualism in property has generally Ibeen 
accompanied by a hostility to exclusive wedlock, in 
antiquity and modern times, and I believe I am not 
wrong when I add, very often by a leaning to pan- 
theism, in the sphere of religion. But the Utopists 
are not the only communists. Paley, who would have 
shrunk from being called a communist, nevertheless 
explains individual property on the mere ground of 
his " expediency" and in a manner which the avowed 
communists of our times — Quinesset and Proudhon — 
have been willing to accept, only they differ as to 
the expediency, and why not differ on that ? Paley 
and the larger portion of modern publicists main- 
tained, and even Webster asserted on a solemn occa- 
sion,* that property is the creature of government. 
But government is the agent of society, so that, if the 
same society should see fit to change the order of 
things, and to undo its own doing, no objection can 
be made on the ground of right and justice. Rous- 
seau says, indeed, that the first fence erected to sep- 
arate land from the common stock, brought misery 

* It was the perusal of this assertion by Mr. Webster, in a speech in Ohio, 
in 1828, which first led the author to reflections which were ultimately given 
in his Essays on Labor and Property. He totally denies that property is the 
creature of government. 



108 ADDEESS 

upon men, and Prondlion formulated tliis idea wlien 
he said ; Property is theft ; bnt the point of starting 
is common to all. 

The radical error of the communist consists in his 
exclusive acknowledgment of the principle of social- 
ism, and that he endeavors to apply it even to that 
which has its very origin and being in individualism — 
to property. Man can not exist without producing ; 
production always presupposes appropriation ; both 
are essentially iadividual, and where appropriation 
consists in occupation by a society as a unit, this is 
no less exclusive or individual property, with refer- 
ence to all other societies, than the property held by 
a single man. The communist does not seem to see . 
the absurdity of demanding common property for all 
men in France, upon what he considers philosophic 
grounds, yet excluding the rest of mankind from that 
property. The radical error of the individualist, on 
the other hand, is, that he wholly disavows the 
principle of socialism, and, generally, reasons oil the 
unstable and shaking ground of expediency alone. 
He forgets that both, individualism and socialism, are 
true and ever-active principles, and that the very 
idea of the state implies both ; for, the state is a so- 
ciety, and a society consists of individuals who never 
lose their individual character, but are united by 
common bonds, interests, organizations and a common 



OF ME. LIEBER. 109 

continuity. A society is not represented by a mass 
of iron in wMcli the original particles of tlie ore have 
lost all separate existence by refinement and smelt- 
ing ; nor is it represented by a crowd of units acci- 
dentally huddled together. It is on the principle of 
socialism alone that it can be explained why I may 
be forced, and ought to be so, to pay my share toward 
the war which I may loathe, but upon which my 
state, my society has resolved. How will you ex- 
plain that charity is no longer left wholly to depend 
upon individual piety, but that the government takes 
part of my property in the shape of a poor-tax, to sup- 
port the indigent ? or how is the potent right of roads 
to be explained ? that I must pay toward common 
education when I may educate my children in a pri- 
vate school or may have none at all to be educated ? 
or toward a scientific expedition, or to support the 
administration of justice, when I may not have had 
a single law-suit or when I might think it more con- 
venient to return to the primitive age of private re- 
venge ? On what principle do you prohibit infamous 
books ? Why must I bear the folly of my legislators 
or submit to the consequences of a crude diplomatist ? 
Why are we proud of the willing submission of the 
minority after a passionately-contested presidential 
election? The principle of socialism is interwoven 
with our whole existence ; for, it is a social existence. 



110 ADDEESS 

How, again, can we explain tlie very idea of rights, 
tlie protection of man, all tlie contents of all tlie bills 
of rights — the liberty of the press or communion, the 
freedom of worship or the right we have to slay the 
sheriff that breaks into our house with an illegal 
warrant, if not on the ground of individualism ? All 
taxation is founded on socialism, inasmuch as society 
takes by force, actual or threatened, part of my own, 
and on individualism, because it is proportioned ac- 
cording to the capacity of the individual to pay and 
takes a lawful portion only. When the Athenian 
council decreed a liturgy, there was socialism indeed 
pretty strongly prevailing. The principle of individ- 
ualism is everywhere, for our existence is, also, an indi- 
vidual one. We shudder instinctively at the idea of 
losing our individuality, and our religion teaches that 
we must take it with us beyond the limits of time. 
Even a heathen, a Hindoo law-giver, said long be- 
fore our era : " Single is each man born ; single he 
dieth; single he receiveth the reward of his good, 
and single the punishment for his evil deeds." 

The two principles of humanity, individualism and 
socialism, show themselves from the very beginning 
in their incipient pulsations, and as mankind advance 
they become more and more distinct and assume 
more and more their legitimate spheres. Individu- 
alism is far more distinct with us than in anti- 



OF ME. LIEBEE. Ill 

quity, in property and in the rights of man, with all 
that flows from them ; and socialism is far more 
clearly developed with us than with the Greeks or 
Romans, in primary education, charity, intercommuni- 
on by theliberty of the press or the mail, the punitary 
systems, sanitary measures, public justice and the many 
spheres in which the united private wants have been 
raised to public interests, and often passed even into 
the sphere of international law. Christianity, which, 
historically speaking, is a co-efficient of the highest 
power of nearly all the elements of humanity and 
civilization, has had an intensifying effect on individu- 
alism as well as on socialism. There is, perhaps, no 
more striking instance of a higher degree of individu- 
alism and socialism developed at the same time, than 
in the administration of penal justice, which always 
begins with private revenge and gradually becomes 
public justice, when the government obliges every 
one to pay toward the punishment of a person that has 
directly injured only one other individual. Yet indi- 
vidualism is more developed in this advanced adminis- 
tration of justice, inasmuch as it always pronounces 
clearer and clearer, and more and more precautions 
are taken, that the individual wrong-doer alone shall 
suffer. There is no atonement demanded, as was the 
case with the Greeks, but plain punishment for a 
proved wrong, so that, if the crime is proved but not 



112 ADDEESS 

the cruninal, we do not demand, on the ground of 
socialism, the suffering of some one, which the Greeks 
frequently did. 

Act on individualism alone, and you would reduce 
society to a mere crowd of egotistical units, far be- 
low the busy but peaceful inmates of the ant-hill; 
act on socialism alone, and you reduce society to 
loathsome despotism, in which individuals would 
be distinguished by a mere number, as the in- 
mates of Sing Sing. Despotism, of whatever name, 
is the most equahtarian government. The communist 
forgets that communism in property, as far as it can 
exist in reahty, is a characteristic feature of low bar- 
barism. Herodotus tells us what we find with exist- 
ing savages. Mine and Thine in property and 
marriage is but dimly known by them. The com- 
munist wants to " organize," as he calls it, but in fact 
to disindividuahze everything, even effort and labor, 
and a garden of the times of Louis XY., in which 
the ruthless shears have cramped and crippled every 
tree into a slavish uniformity, seems to delight his 
eye more than a high forest, with its organic life and 
freedom. Hobbes, who, two centuries ago, passed 
through the whole theory of all-absorbing power con- 
veyed to one man by popular compact, which we now 
meet with once more in French Csesarism, defined 
religion as that superstition which is estabhshed by 



OF ME. LIEBEE. 113 

government, and we recollect how closely allied all 
despotism is to communism. The highest liberty — 
that civil freedom which protects individual humanity 
in the highest degree, and at the same time provides 
society with the safest and healthiest organism through 
which it obtains its social ends of protection and his- 
toric position — may not inaptly be said to consist 
in a due separation and conjunction of individualism 
and socialism.* 

One more remark. It is a striking fact that the 
old adage, all extremes meet, has been illustrated by 
none more forcibly than by the socialists; for the 
most enthusiastic socialists of France, America and 
Germany have actually come to the conclusion, that 
there need be and ought to be no government at 
all among men truly free, except, indeed, as one of 

* It is for these reasons that the new term sociology seems to be inappropri- 
ate. Years ago it suggested itself to the author, when he desired to find a term 
more comprehensive and more compact than that of political philosophy, but he 
soon discarded it. If those French writers adopt it, in whose theories the idea 
of society absorbs almost all individualism, it is consistent. With them society, 
or the government which is its agent, whether monarchical or republican, is ex- 
pected and demanded to provide for everything, to organize all relations, and 
to do all things that can possibly be done by the government ; but it is to be 
' regretted that men like Lord Brougham have adopted the term. The national 
society ought not to be the all-absorbing one, nor is the jural society the only 
important society to which the individual of our race belongs. We belong 
to societies of great importance, which are narrower than the State, and to 
others which extend far beyond it, as is sufficiently shown by the religious 
society or church, the oeconomical society or society of production and ex- 
change, the society of comity, the society of letters and science (for instance, 
in Germany or that which covers England and the United States), and the 
international society embracing all the Cis-Caucaslan people. 



114 ADDEESS 

our own most visionary socialists naively adds, for 
roads and some such things. For them Aristotle 
discovered in vain that : Man is by nature a political 
animal. " Leave them and pass on." 

The political philosopher will now take in hand, 
as a separate topic, our own polity and political 
existence ; and this will lead to our great theme, to 
a manly discussion of Civil Liberty and Self-Govern- 
ment. We are here in the peristyle of a vast temple, 
and I dare not enter it with you at present, for fear 
that all the altars and statues and votive tablets of 
humanity, with all the marbled records of high mar- 
tyrdom and sanguinary errors, would detain us far 
beyond the midnight hour. It is our American 
theme, and we, above all men, are called upon to 
know it well, with all the aspirations, all the duties 
and precious privileges, all the struggles, achieve- 
ments, dangers and errors, all the pride and humilia- 
tion, the checks and impulses, the law and untrameled 
action, the blessings and the blood, the great realities, 
the mimicry and licentiousness, the generous sacri- 
fices and the self-seeking, with all these memories and 
actualities — all wound up in tiiu mtmui) of that one 
word Liberty. 

And now the student will be prepared to enter 
upon that branch which is the glory of our race m 
modern history, and possibly the greatest achieve- 



OF MR. LIEBER. 115 

meut of combined judgment and justice, acting under 
the genial light of culture and religion — on Interna- 
tional Law, that law which has gathered even the 
ocean under its fold. The ancients knew it not in 
their best time ; and life and property, once having 
left the shore, were out of the pale of law and justice. 
Even down to our Columbus, the mariner stood by 
the helm with his sword, and watched the compass 
in armor. 

Pohtical science treats of man in his most unport- 
ant earthly phase ; the State is the institution which 
has to protect or to check all his endeavoi-s, and, in 
turn, reflects them. It is natural, therefore, that a 
thorough course of this branch should become, in a 
great measure, a delineation of the history of civiliza- 
tion, with all the undulations of humanity, from that 
loose condition of men in which Barth found many 
of our fellow-beings in Central Africa, to our own 
accumulated civilization, which is like a rich tapestry, 
the main threads of which are Grecian intellectuality, 
christian morality and trans-mundane thought, Ro- 
man law and institutionality, and Teutonic individual 
independ'e'Sce, 'especia"ity developed in Anglican hb- 
erty and self-government. 

Need I add that the student, having passed through 
these fields and having viewed these regions, will be 
the better prepared for the grave purposes for which 



116 ADDRESS OF MR. LIEBER. 

this country destines Mm, and as a partner in the 
great commonwealth of self-government ? If not, 
then strike these sciences from your catalogue. It is 
true, indeed, that the scholar is no consecrated priest 
of knowledge, if he does not love it for the sake of 
knowledge. And this is even important in a prac- 
tical point of view ; for aU knowledge, to be usefully 
applied, must be far in advance of its application. It 
is like the sun, which, we are told, causes the j)lant 
to grow when he has already sunk below the horizon ; 
yet I acknowledge without reserve, for all public 
instruction and all education, the token which I am in 
the habit of taking into every lecture room of mine, 
to impress it ever anew on my mind and on that of 
my hearers, that we teach and learn : 

ISrOJSr SCHOLiE SED VITiE,* VIT^ UTRIQUE. 

* Seneca. 



MATHEMATICS: 

INAUGURAL ADDRESS 

OP 

CHAELES DAYIES, LL. D., 

PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 
ON 

f |e fatur^, f aiiguag^ aiii ^Btn 

OF 

MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE, 

February llth, 1858. 



ADDRESS. 

The first, and surely the most difficult duty- 
assigned to me by the Board of Trustees, is that 
of explaining to a popular audience the nature of 
Mathematical Science — the forms of its language — 
its uses as a means of mental training and develop- 
ment — ^its value as the true basis of the practical — 
the sources of knowledge which it opens to the mind 
and the place which it should occupy in a justly bal- 
anced system of Collegiate instruction. 

The term Mathematics, as used by the ancients, em- 
braced every known Science and was also applicable 
to all other branches of Knowledge. Subsequently, it 
was restricted to those more difficult subjects which 
require continuous attention, severe study, patient 
investigation and exact reasoning; and such subjects 
were called Disciplinal, or Mathematical. 

Mathematics, as a science, is conversant about the 
laws of Numbers and Space. The two abstract quan- 
tities, Number and Space, are the only subjects of 
Mathematical Science. The laws which are evolved in 
the processes employed in searching out the elements 



120 ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 

of these abstract quantities, in discussing their rela- 
tions, and in framing a proper language by means of 
wHcli tliese relations can be recorded and a knowl- 
edge of tliem communicated, constitute tlie Science 
of Mathematics. The faculties of the mind chiefly 
employed in the cultivation of this Science ar^ sim- 
ply, the apprehension, the judgment and the reason- 
ing faculty. 

The term quantity, applicable both to number and 
space, embraces but eight classes of units : 1st, Ab- 
stract Units ; 2d, Units of Currency ; 3d, Units of 
Length ; 4th, Units of Surface ; 5th, Units of Vol- 
ume ; 6th, Units of Weight ; Yth, Units of Time ; 
and 8th, Units of Angular Measure. 

The laws which make up the Science of Mathema- 
tics are established in a series of logical propositions, 
deduced from a few self-evident notions of these uni- 
ties, which are all referred to number and space. All 
the definitions and axioms, and all the truths deduced 
from them, by processes of reasoning, are therefore 
traceable to these two sources. 

In mathematics, names imply the existence of the 
things which they name, and the definitions of those 
names express attributes of the things. Hence, all 
definitions do, in fact, rest on the intuitive inference 
that things corresponding to the words defined have a 
conceivable existence as subjects of thought, and do, or 



ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 121 

may have, proximatively, an actual existence. Every 
definition of this class is a tacit assumption of some 
proposition, which is expressed by means of the defini- 
tion, and which gives to such definition its importance. 

The axioms of Geometry are intuitive mductions ; 
that is, they are perfectly conceived by a single pro- 
cess of the mind, without the intervention of other 
ideas, the moment the facts on which they depend 
are apprehended. When we say, " A whole is equal 
to the sum of all its parts," or, " A whole is greater 
than any of its parts," the mind immediately refers 
to a single thing, divided into parts; it then com- 
pares the whole thing with all its parts, or the 
whole thing with some of its parts ; and then infers, 
by a process of generahzation, that what is true of 
one thing and its parts is also true of every other 
thing and its parts: so that these axioms, however 
self-evident, are still generalized propositions, and so 
far of the inductive kind, that, independently of expe- 
rience, they would not present themselves spontane- 
ously to the mind. 

The pure mathematics being based on definitions 
and axioms, as premises, all its truths are established 
by processes of deductive reasonmg ; hence, it is 
purely a deductive science. If all the connections 
between the minor and major premises were obvi- 
ous to the senses, or as evident as the truth, "A 



122 



whole is equal to tlie sum of all its parts," there 
would be no necessity for trains of reasoning, and 
deductive science would not exist. Trains of rea- 
soning are necessary for extending tlie definitions 
and axioms to new cases ; and there is no logical 
test of truth, in the whole range of mathematical 
science, except in the conformity of the conclusions 
to the definitions and axioms, or to such known prin- 
ciples as may have been established from them. 

Language is a collection of all the signs of 
thought by means of which we express our ideas 
and their relations. The language of mathematics 
is mixed. It is composed partly of symbols, which 
have a precise and known signification, and partly of 
words borrowed from our common language. The 
symbols, although arbitrary marks, are, nevertheless, 
entirely general in their signification, as signs and 
instruments of thought, and when the sense in which 
they are used is once fixed, by definition, they always 
retain the same meaning throughout the same pro- 
cess. The meaning of the words taken from our 
common vocabulary is often modified and sometimes 
entirely changed, when transferred to the language of 
science. They are then used in a particular sense 
and are said to have a technical signification. 

There are three principal forms, or dialects of the 



MR. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 123 

Mathematical language : the language of Number, of 
which the elementary symbols are the ten figures: 
the language of Geometry, of which the elements 
are the right line and the curve ; and the more 
comprehensive language of Analysis, in which the 
quantities considered, whether numerical, concrete, 
or appertaining to space, are represented by letters 
of the alphabet. These three forms of language are 
the basis of classification, and the science of mathe- 
matics is divided into three corresponding parts: 
Arithmetic, Geometry, and Analysis. 

The alphabet of the Arithmetical language con- 
tains ten characters, called figures, each of which has 
a name, and when standing by itseK indicates as 
many things as that name denotes. There are but 
three combinations of these characters — the first is 
formed by writmg them in rows — the second by 
writing: some of them over or under others — and the 
thii'd, by means of the decimal point. This language, 
having ten elements and three combinations, is more 
simple, more minute, and more exact than any other 
known form of expressing oui- thoughts. It records 
all the daily transactions of the world, involving 
number and quantity. The yearly income — the accu- 
mulation of property — ^the balance sheets of mercan- 
tile enterprise are all expressed in numbers, and 
may be written m figures. These ten little charac- 



124 ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 

ters are not only the sleepless sentinels of trade and 
commerce, but they also make known all the prac- 
tical results of scientific labor. 

The language of Geometry is pictorial, and has but 
two elements, the straight line and curve. The com- 
binations of these simple elements give every form 
and variety of the geometrical language. Distance, 
surface, volume and angle, are names denoting por- 
tions of space. Under these four names every part 
of space, in form, extent and dimension, is represent- 
ed to the mind by means of the straight line and 
curve. This language is both simple and comprehen- 
sive. The shortest distance — the curve of grace and 
beauty — ^the smooth surface and the rugged bound- 
ary are alike amenable to its laws. It presents to the 
mind, through the eye, the forms and relative mag- 
nitudes of all the heavenly bodies, and, also, of the 
most minute and delicate objects that are revealed 
by the microscope. It is the connecting link between 
theoretical and practical knowledge in the mechanic 
arts, and the only language in which science speaks 
to labor. All the works of Architecture, Sculpture 
and Painting, are but images of the imagination until 
they assume the geometrical forms. 

The language of analysis is more comprehensive 
than the language of figures or the pictorial lan- 
guage of geometry ; indeed, it embraces them both. 



ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 125 

Its elements are the leading and final letters of the 
alphabet, and a few arbitrary signs. The combi- 
nations of these elements are few in number and 
simple in form; and from these humble sources are 
derived the fruitful language of analytical science. 
This language is minute, suggestive, certain, general 
and comprehensive. It will express every property 
and relation of number — every form whi€h the imagi- 
nation has given to space — every moment of time 
which has elapsed since hours began to be numbered 
— and every motion which has taken place since mat- 
ter began to move. One or the other of these three 
forms of mathematical language is in daily use in 
every part of the world, and especially so in every 
place where science is employed to guide the hand 
of labor — to investigate the laws of matter — or to 
enlarge the boundaries of knowledge. 

Of all mysteries, none is greater than the mystery 
of language. The invisible essence which we call 
mind, holds no communion with other minds, except 
through the double system of signs, the language of 
the eye and the language of the ear. Destroy the 
power of language, and the hghts of knowledge would 
be extinguished. Man would live only in the pres- 
ent. The past and the future would be equally be- 
yond his reach. Through language we look back 
over the records of the past, and trace the progress 



126 IVIE. DAVIES' ADDKESS. 

of our race tlirougli all its vicissitudes and changes 
from the very cradle of Creation. The wisdom of 
philosophy — the power of eloquence — the graces of 
rhetoric and the inspirations of poetry, thus become 
the property of every age and the common heritage 
of mankind. Scientific language reaches even over a 
wider field. The laws of the material world are the 
truths which it records, and the thoughts of God, 
manifested in all the works of the visible creation, 
are the treasures of its literature. 

The first step in mental training is to furnish the 
mind with clear and distinct ideas, with settled 
names ; each idea and its name being so associated 
that the one shall always suggest the other. The 
ideas which make up our knowledge of mathematics 
fulfill exactly these requirements. They are expressed 
in a fixed, definite and certain language, which in all 
its elementary forms may be illustrated by images 
or pictures, clear and distinct in their outlines, and 
having names which suggest at once their character- 
istics and properties. 

By means of visible representations of lines, sur- 
faces and volumes, the mind contemplates the abstract, 
as it were, with a thinking eye. Form, figure, dis- 
tance, sj)ace, and the laws relating to them, are 
thus rendered familiar through the visibihty of picto- 



MR. DA vies' ADDEESS. 127 

rial representations. This pictorial language imparts 
a deep interest, both from its certainty and its influ- 
ence on the imagination — it attracts and animates 
the minds of the young, and gradually prepares them 
for those higher abstractions and mental efforts, of 
which they are at first incapable. 

Most of the errors and conflicts in the Schools of 
Philosophy have arisen from the double or incom- 
plete sense in which words are employed. The terms 
are aU defined in a common language, but there is no 
fixed standard beyond the language itself Each 
term is viewed from a different stand point, and, like 
the rainbow painted on the clouds, is different to every 
spectator, though apparently the same. 

Mathematics is free from all such sources of mis- 
take and error. There is no other subject of knowl- 
edge in which there is that exact equivalency be- 
tween the thought and its sign. Number and Space, 
in all their elementary combinations, may be present- 
ed to the mind by pictorial representations. The 
senses are thus brought to the aid of the conceptive 
powers, and by means of this double language, the 
forms, attributes and laws of magnitude, are explained 
and verified. 

The study of mathematics accustoms us to the 
strict use of this exact and copious language, in which 
all the terms are exponents of distinct crystallized 



128 * ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 

ideas. Using tliese terms as instruments of reason- 
ing, we advance with a steady step, secured from 
the sources or causes of error which are concealed 
under uncertain or conflicting meanings. 

Knowledge is a clear and certain conception of 
that which is true. Its elements are acquired through 
the medium of the senses, by observation, experiment 
and experience ; and these three indicate certain rela- 
tions which the elements bear to each other, and 
which we express under the general name of law. 
Law, therefore, is a term of generalization, denoting 
an order of sequence in phenomena, whether in the 
material or spiritual, the animate or inanimate world. 
This order and connection are not obvious to the 
senses. They are the hidden treasures of knowledge, 
and are only discovered and brought to light by the 
highest exercise of the reasoning faculty. 

Since the time of Aristotle, the exact law which 
governs the reasoning faculty has been well known. 
By careful analysis and a profound generalization, he 
subjected every principle of deductive reasoning to a 
single law, expressed by the dictum, and indicated 
every operation of that law in the syllogism. The 
system was yet incomplete. The major premise, on 
which the whole fabric rested, was assumed, not 
proved. Bacon supplied this deficiency, in showing 
that all our knowledge rests, ultimately, on the 



ME. DAVIES' ADDRESS. 129 

hj^Dotliesis of tlie uniform operation of the laws of 
nature, and that such uniformity may be inferred by 
the reasoning faculty, from a collection and compari- 
son of facts, furnished by observation, experiment 
and experience. This completed the golden circle of 
logic, and subjected all the laws of nature to the 
processes of science. 

It becomes, therefore, an important inquiry how 
far the study of mathematics is a means, in the cul- 
tivation of the reasoning faculties, through which we 
derive our scientific knowledge — how far it is a use- 
ful gymnastic of the mind — what mental habits it 
inculcates, and what developments it produces. We 
have already adverted to its clear, precise, and com- 
prehensive language, and to the elementary ideas, 
which that language impresses on the mind. Are 
these ideas isolated — incapable of classification and 
wanting in the attributes necessary to a logical 
arrangement ? 

It is the chief excellence of mathematical science, 
regarded as a means of mental training, that the 
definitions and axioms are the prolific sources of 
every deduction. They are the ultimate premises 
to which every principle can be referred, and the 
law of connection which binds together all the truths 
of this complex system, is the simple law of the 
syllogism. 



130 ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 

Mathematical reasoning, so far as tlie logic is con- 
cerned, is precisely the same as any other kind of 
reasoning. It dijffers from other methods only in the 
greater preciseness of its language, the nature of the 
subject and the more obvious relations of the pre- 
mises to each other, and to the conclusion. It has 
been urged that these differences are detrimental, 
rather than useful, in the development of the rea- 
soning faculty — ^that the exact equivalency between 
the idea and the language, the fixed and obvious 
relation of the premises to each other and to the 
conclusion, leave no scope for originality in the 
mental processes, and that truth is thus evolved 
mechanically, rather than intellectually. Another 
objection has also been found, in the fact that the 
matter in the mathematical processes is certain, 
while in all other cases it is contingent— and that to 
deal with what is certain, in accordance with obvious 
and fixed laws, disqualifies the mind to deal with 
what is probable according to laws less obvious and 
rigorous. 

In regard to the second objection, it is quite cer- 
tain that the degree of probability, in any given 
case, can only be determined by comparing what is 
contingent with what is certain — certainty being 
assumed as the standard — all inferences are rehed 
upon as they approach this standard, and distrusted 



MR. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 131 

as they recede from it. Hence, in all systems of 
intellectual training, having in view the cultivation 
of the reasoning faculty, the mind should he accus- 
tomed to contemplate that which is certain, in order 
that it may form a true estimate of that which is 
contingent or probable. 

How far the laws which regulate and control the 
processes of mathematical reasoning are merely me- 
chanical, and how far their study and contemplation 
confine the mind to a mere routine, is best answered 
by a careful and searching analysis. The processes 
begin with obvious and elementary truths, defined 
by a precise language, and aided, if need be, by 
pictorial representations. They then advance step 
by step in a series of regular and dependent grada- 
tions, developing the concealed and sublime proper- 
ties of number and sj)ace. These trains of demon- 
strative reasoning produce the most certain knowl- 
edge of which the mind is capable. They establish 
truth so clearly that none can deny or doubt. The 
premises are not only certain, but the most obvious 
truths which can be presented to the mind, and the 
conclusions result from the most palpable relations 
of the premises to each other. What discij)line can 
better train the mind to diligence in study — to close 
and continuous attention — to habits of abstraction — 
and to a true logical development ? 



132 



A wide distinction must be made between those 
processes of mathematics wMcli are merely mechanical 
and that knowledge of the laws of the science which 
develops and applies those processes. The calculating 
machine is a mere instrument, but the discovery and 
application of the laws of its construction are among 
the highest efforts of genius. If the machine were 
dashed to pieces, it could be remodeled, for the law 
of its construction is known. The conception, there- 
fore, is not mechanical because it is manifested by 
mechanical agencies. Descartes brought all space 
within the range and power of analysis, by new 
methods of representing lines and surfaces. Newton's 
sublime conception of the law of universal gravita- 
tion is developed in the language of Geometry. 
Does it follow, because the processes of Geometry 
and the rules for solving equations are reduced to 
fixed principles and settled methods, that the ub jects 
to which they may be applied are limited in their 
nature ? or, that the contemplation of these subjects, 
through this, the only language in which they can be 
presented to the mind, is likely to give a contracted 
or one-sided development ? 

Mathematical Science deals with Number, Space, 
Time and Motion. Each is a type of the Creator, in- 
finite in itself, and all are under the dominion of 
universal laws. In the development of these laws, in 



MR. DAVIES' ADDRESS. 133 

a language free from obscurity, and in a logic above 
the influence of passion, sophistry and prejudice, the 
mind acquires an intensity and ardor which lift it 
above the strife and petty controversies of earth, into 
the sphere of the intellectual and absolute. A theo- 
rem demonstrated is an indestructible truth ; but this 
is not all, it is connected with antecedent truths of 
the same kind, and is also a guaranty of our success 
in new efforts to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge. 
In the construction of the mathematical science, 
we begin with the axiom and proceed from propo- 
sition to proposition, under the guidance of a rigor- 
ous logic, till we reach the boundaries of that 
intellectual region which has been already explored. 
Here we pause, but do not stop ; for beyond are 
hidden truths which excite our innate desire to 
know, and an ambition and hope of progress. So, 
when we stretch out the mathematics to explain and 
embrace the philosophy of the heavens, we proceed 
from our own planet, in regular gradations, till we 
reach the remotest orb of our system. Still further 
on, we enter the region of Arcturus, Orion, the 
Pleiades and the Milky "Way ; and, even beyond the 
smallest star whose light has reached the earth, is 
unmeasured space, yet perhaps to be surveyed by 
more perfect instruments, and measured by the 
known laws of mathematical science. 



134 ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 

"There is good room to ask wlietlier the peculiar 
energy of what might be called the mathematical soul 
does not caTry with it a deep meaning, and declare 
the truth of man's destination at the first, and of his 
destiny still to take a place and to act a part in a 
world of manifested truth and eternal order. Do we 
venture too far in saying that, when mathematical 
abstractions of the higher sort take possession of a 
vigorous reason, there is placed before us a tacit re- 
cognition (one among several, all carrying the same 
meaning,) of the fact that the human mind is so 
framed as to find its home nowhere but in a sphere 
within which the absolute and the unchangeable 
shall stand revealed in the view of the finite intel- 
ligence?"* 

The term " practical," in its common acceptation, 
often denotes shorter methods of obtaining results 
than are indicated by science. It implies a substitu- 
tion of natural sagacity and "mother wit" for the 
results of hard study and laborious effort. It imphes 
the use of knowledge before it is acquired — the sub- 
stitution of the results of mere experiment for the 
deductions of science, and the placing of empiricism 
above philosophy. But give to " practical" its true 
and right signification, and it becomes a word of real 

* Isaac Taylor. 



ME. DA vies' ADDEESS. 135 

import and definite value. In its right sense, it de- 
notes the best means of making the true ideal the 
actual: that is, of applying the principles of science in 
all the practical business of life, and of bodying forth 
in material form the conceptions of taste and genius. 

Beyond the obvious application of simple and 
known principles, the whole problem of the practical 
lies in the measurement, modification and best uses of 
the forces of nature. In all the uses and applications 
of these forces, material substances are employed, 
and these must be fashioned according to certain 
forms indicated by scientific formulas. These formu- 
las are constructed from the laws which regulate the 
cohesion of the particles of the substance emj)loyed — 
the nature of the force to be applied — the amount of 
that force and the ultimate end to be attained. All 
these fixed laws of force — all their combinations — 
and all the forms of the materials employed in using- 
them for practical purposes, can only be reached 
through the processes and language of mathematics. 

Machines and workshops afford marked illustra-^ 
tions of the utility and value of mathematical science, 
and, in their resolution of difficult practical problems,, 
furnish a striking exhibition of the power of mind 
over matter. Any one, introduced for the first time- 
to the interior of one of our great factories, would 
doubtless regard with no small perplexity the equip- 



136 ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 



ment and play of so many variously directed instru- 
ments of motion— tlie great size and extent of tlie 
whole structure — ^the jar wHcli startles at first, but 
by the steadiness of its pulsations soon persuades you 
to take the cadence and measure of the great machine, 
and to appropriate, as it were, a share of the produ- 
cing power — and it would be strange if you were not 
also persuaded that all this bewildering procession 
of complex returning movements must be under the 
guidance of some great scientific law. 

All the parts of that complicated machinery are 
adjusted to each other, and were indeed so arranged, 
according to a given plan, before a single wheel was 
formed by the hand of the forger. The power neces- 
sary to do the entire work was first carefully cal- 
culated, and then distributed throughout the ramifi- 
cations of the machinery. Each part was so arranged 
as to fulfill its office. Every circumference and band 
and cog, has its specific duty assigned to it. They 
are connecting parts of an entire practical scientific 
system, over which one of the parts, fitly called the 
governor, is most ingeniously appointed to preside. 
It is the function of this apt and beautiful contrivance 
to regulate the force which shall drive the whole, ac- 
cording to a uniform speed; and it performs the 
office with such sensibility and seeming intelligence, 
that, on the slightest increase of velocity, it com- 



137 



mences and executes, witli easy gi^adations, a diminu- 
tion of the moving force of the machine, and as in- 
stinctively calls up additional power the moment that 
the speed slackens. All this is the result of calcula- 
tion. When the curious shall visit these exhibitions 
of ingenuity and skill, let them not suppose that 
they are the oflfepring of chance and experiment. 
They are the embodiment, by intelhgent labor, of 
the results of the most difficult investigations of 
science. 

The Steamship affords another impressive illustra- 
tion of theoretical and practical science. Observe 
her form — ^how perfect in all its parts — how beauti- 
ful in outline — ^how exact in proportion. See how 
gracefully she rests upon the water, which she 
scarcely seems to touch. On the upper deck, the 
masts and ropes, the yards, the spars, the booms 
and sails, are all adjusted to the proper angle and 
are the instruments by which the power of the wind 
is pressed into the service of commerce. But this 
is not the power on which she relies. The great 
mechanical contrivance, to which I have alluded, 
which just now shook the earth with its jar, is to be 
readjusted and folded within a structure having its 
own peculiar form and limits, designed for special 
functions and moving on a new element. The source 
of power is a simple change in the form of a fluid. 



138 ME. DAYIES' ADDEESS. 

The massive cylinders, tlie liuge levers, the lifting 
and closing valves are contrivances to convey tMs 
power to tlie water wheels, where the resistance of 
the water, according to known laws, transfers it to 
the ship itself. 

Over all this complication of machinery — over all 
this variety of principle and workmanship, science 
has waved her magic wand. There is not a cylinder 
whose dimensions were not measured — not a lever 
whose power was not calculated, nor a valve which 
does not open and shut at the appointed moment. 
There is not, in all this structure, a bolt, a screw, or 
rod which was not provided for before the great 
shaft was forged, and which does not bear to that 
shaft a proper proportion. 

The language of Geometry and Number furnished 
the architect with all the signs and instruments of 
thought necessary to a perfect ideal of his work, 
before he took the first step in its execution. It also 
enabled him, by drawings and figures, so to direct 
the hand of labor as to form the actual after its 
pattern — ^the ideal. The various parts may be con- 
structed by different mechanics, at different places, 
but the law of science is so certain that every part 
will have its right dimensions, and when all are 
put together they form a perfect whole. 

When the work is done and the ship takes her 



ME. DA vies' address. 139 

departure for anotlier continent, a small piece of iron, 
a few inches in length, poised on its centre, under 
the influence of a known force, is the little pilot 
which guides her over trackless waters. Science has 
also provided, for daily use, maps and charts of the 
port which she leaves, of the ocean to be traversed 
and of the coasts and harbors which are to be visited. 
On these are marked the results of much careful 
labor. The shoals, the channels, the points of 
danger and the places of security, are all indicated. 
Near by hangs the Barometer, constructed from 
mathematical formulas, to indicate changes in the 
weight of the atmosphere and give warning of 
the apj^roaching tempest. In close proximity are 
the Sextant and the Tables of Bowditch. These are 
the simple contrivances which science has furnished 
to correct the errors of the needle, by observations 
on the heavenly bodies, and to deteimine the exact 
position of the vessel at any moment of the voy- 
age. Thus, practical science, which determined the 
form of the vessel best adapted to a given velocity, 
which measured and distributed the propelling force 
and which guided the hand of the mechanic in 
every workshop, is, under Providence, the means 
of conducting her in safety over the ocean. It is, 
indeed, the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by 
night. 



140 MR. DA vies' ADDEESS. 

The construction of railways is a recent and most 
important application of science. The mechanic arts, 
commerce and civilization have all received an im- 
pulse in this new development of power. The 
chariots of commerce, which rush with such dizzying 
velocity over the iron bands which now nearly en- 
circle the globe, are all guided by immutable laws 
that have been carefully developed by the aid of 
diagrams and equations. When you see the long 
train, with its locomotive, ascending the mountain, 
fear not, for science traced the curve and balanced 
the forces. When the mountain is to be pierced 
instead of being scaled, a few lines drawn on paper 
indicate the precise points, at the opposite extremi- 
ties, where the work is to be begun ; and after years 
of labor the two working parties meet near the 
centre, and in the exact line established before the 
ground was broken. 

In every case where power is employed, either to 
produce motion or to maintain a state of rest, the 
mechanical principle of force and resistance must be 
considered and discussed. Mathematics is the only 
form of language which connects science with all the 
mechanic arts and guides the hand of labor as it 
bodies forth the conceptions of the mind. It is, 
therefore, the only true basis of the practical; and 
perhaps it is not too much to add, that whatever is 



MR. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 141 

true and just iu tlie practical is the actual of an 
antecedent ideal. 

Material objects are the first things which attract 
our notice. We behold the earth filled with products 
and teeming with Hfe. We note the return of day 
and night at regular intervals — ^the commg of sum- 
mer and winter, and the succession of heat and cold. 
We see the sun m the firmament — we turn our eyes 
to the starry heavens and behold the sentinels of 
night as they look down upon us. Facts, often 
observed, suggest the idea of causes — and, when 
science scatters her light over the pathway of the 
past and the future, we learn the existence of gen- 
eral laws imparted by the fiat of Him who created 
all things — and come to understand that mind in all 
its attributes, and matter in all its forms, are subject 
to those laws — and that their study is the noblest 
employment of our intellectual nature. 

To the uneducated man, all the world is a mystery. 
He does not see how so great a uniformity can exist 
with the infinite variety which pervades every depart- 
ment of nature, animate and inanimate. In the ani- 
mal kingdom no two of a species are exactly alike ; 
and yet the general resemblance and conformity are 
so close that the Naturalist, from the examination of 
a single bone, finds no difficulty in determining the 



142 ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 

species, size and structure of tlie animal. So, also, 
in the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, wliere all 
tlie structures of growth and formation, though infi- 
nitely varied, are yet conformable to like general 
laws. 

The wonderful mechanism displayed in the struc- 
ture of animals was but imperfectly understood, un- 
til analyzed and illustrated by the principles of 
science. Then, a general law, applicable to every case 
involving power and motion, was found to pervade 
the whole. Every bone is proved to be of that 
length and diameter best adapted to its use — every 
muscle is inserted at the right point, and works about 
the right centre — ^the feathers of every bird are 
shaped in the best form, and the curves in which they 
cleave the air are the best adapted to velocity. It is 
demonstrated, that in every case, and in all the vari- 
eties of form, in which forces are applied, either to 
increase power or gain velocity, general laws have 
been established to produce the desired results. Thus 
science makes known to us the foreknowledge and 
wisdom of the Creator. 

But inanimate nature also speaks to us in the lan- 
guage of general laws, and it is in the investigation 
and interpretation of these laws that mathematical 
science finds its widest range and its most striking 
applications. Experience, aided by observation and 



ME. DAVIES' ADDRESS. 143 

enliglitened by experiment, is tlie recognized fountain 
of all knowledge of nature. On this foundation Bacon 
rested his philosophy. He saw that the deductive 
process of Aristotle, in which the conclusion does not 
reach beyond the premises, was not ^progressive. It 
might, indeed, improve the reasoning process, culti- 
vate habits of nice discrimination and give great pro- 
ficiency in verbal dialectics; but the basis was too 
narrow for that expansive philosophy which was to 
unfold and harmonize all the laws of nature. Hence, 
he suggested a careful examination of nature in every 
department, and thus laid the foundations of a new 
philosophy. Nature was to be interrogated by ex- 
periment ; observation was to note the results and 
gather the facts into the store-house of knowledge. 
Facts, so obtained, were subjected to analysis and 
collation, and from such classification general laws 
were inferred, by a reasoning process called Induc- 
tion. 

This new philosophy gave a startling impulse to 
the mind, and to knowledge. Its subject was nature 
— material and immaterial ; its object, the discovery 
and analysis of those general laws which pervade, 
regulate and impart uniformity to all things ; its 
processes, experience, experiment and observation for 
the ascertainment of facts, analysis and comparison 
for their classification, and the reagoning process for 



144 ME. DA vies' ADDEESS. 

the establislimeiit of general laws. But tlie work 
would liave been incomplete without the aid of 
deductive Science. General laws, deduced from many 
separate cases, by induction, needed additional proof; 
for they might have been inferred from resemblances 
too slight, or from coincidences too few. Mathematics 
affords such proofs. 

Every branch of natural philosophy was originally 
experimental ; each generalization rested on a special 
induction, and was derived from its own distinct set 
of observations and experiments. From being sciences 
of pure experiment, or sciences in which the reason- 
ings consist of no more than one step, and that step 
an induction, all these sciences have become, to some 
extent, and some of them in nearly their whole 
extent, sciences of pure reasoning : thus, multitudes 
of truths, already known by induction, from as many 
different sets of experiments, have come to be exhib- 
ited as deductions, or corollaries from inductive pro- 
positions of a simple and more universal character. 
Thus, Mechanics, Acoustics, Optics and Chemistry, 
have successively been rendered mathematical : and 
Astronomy was brought by Newton within the laws 
of general mechanics. 

The substitution of this circuitous mode of pro- 
ceeding, for a process apparently much easier and 
more natural, is held, and justly too, to be the great- 



ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 145 

est triumpli in tlie investigation of nature. But it is 
necessary to remark that altliough, by this progressive 
transformation, all sciences tend to become more and 
more deductive, they are not, therefore, the less in- 
ductive: for every step in the deduction rests on 
antecedent induction.* 

We can now, therefore, perceive what is the gen- 
eric distinction between sciences which can be made 
deductive, and those which must, as yet, remain 
experimental. The difference consists in our having 
been able, in the first case, and not in the second, to 
establish a set of first inductions, from which, as from 
a general law, we are able to draw a series of con- 
nected and dependent truths. For example, when 
Newton, by observing and comparing the motions 
of several of the bodies of the solar system, discov- 
ered that each, whether its motions were regular 
or apparently anomalous, conformed to the law of 
moving around a common centre, urged by a centri- 
petal force, varying directly as the mass and inversely 
as the square of the distance, he mferred the exist- 
ence of the law for all bodies ; and then demonstra- 
ted, by the aid of mathematics, that no other law 
could produce such motions. This is the most strik- 
ing example which has yet occurred of the transform- 
ation, at a single stroke, of a science, which was in 

* Mill's Logic. 
10 



146 ME. DAVIES' ADDEESS. 

a great degree experimental, into one purely deduct- 
ive. 

It is in tlie great problem of tlie solar system that 
mathematical science displays its omnipotent power. 
The sun himself, manifesting his inexpressible glory 
by the floods of golden light which he scatters 
through the immensity of space, is yet subjected to 
the analytical formula, and must confess to it, from 
his more than imperial throne — his exact dimensions 
— his weight and balancing power, and his relative 
importance when compared with the smallest mote 
which his own light has revealed. It is thus that 
the intellectual power, aided and stimulated by the 
processes of mathematical science, has been able to 
trace backwards, to the earliest past, all the motions 
of the heavenly bodies and to bring the remotest 
future of the planetary system within the range of 
its computations. It is thus that man, inhabitmg 
one of the smallest planets of the system, computes 
the celestial cycles and determines all the laws of the 
movement of the celestial machmery. 

He has done even more than this. Those vagrant 
bodies of the heavens which occasionally visit our 
system, and which seem to have escaped from their 
own spheres and to wander heedlessly through space, 
are yet subjected to the power of analysis. A few 
observations, made by the practical astronomer, afford 



MR. DAVIES' ADDRESS. 14T 

the necessary elements for computing the forms of 
their orbits and their periodic times ; and in distant 
years, at the indicated moment, the comet again 
blazes in the sky. In short, before this august power 
all nature yields up the mystery of her laws. If, 
then, we would enter her spacious temple, and seek 
after the knowledge which is there, let us not forget 
the Aladdin's lamp of mathematical science, which, 
being properly touched, will disclose more treasures 
than have ever been described in Eastern fable. 

The place which mathematics should occupy in a 
system of collegiate instruction is an inquiiy of the 
gravest import, and necessarily involves the question. 
What should be the nature of the system itself? 

It was stated, in the opening address, on the highest 
authority, " that the end of a liberal education is the 
general and harmonious evolution of all the faculties 
and capacities of the mind in theii' relative subor- 
dination." It is not the base, nor the massive shaft, 
nor the beautiful forms of the capital, which fill the 
mind as we gaze on the Corinthian column ; but it is 
theu' unity and the general effect of their combina- 
tion. It is the whole mind, in all its intellectual and 
emotional faculties, to which the experienced educator 
addresses himself 

So far as our knowledge extends, we have found 



148 MK. DAVIES ADDRESS. 

in tliat mysterious essence, tlie mind, a faculty adapt- 
ed to tlie apprehension of every law, and an emo- 
tion corresponding to the contemplation of every 
ol)ject. May not the reverse of this proposition 
Ije true ? May it not be, that for every faculty 
of the mind, whether intellectual or emotional, there 
exists, somewhere, a proper object of contemplation? 
and that the peifection of our knowledge and being 
will be attained when all such objects are found ? It 
is in accordance vnth. this law that different studies 
cultivate different powers of the mind, and that it 
requii-es the study of many subjects to give a general 
and harmonious evolution of all its faculties. Mathe- 
matics does not equally cultivate every faculty — it is 
the massive trunk and outward form, but language, 
literature, and moral culture, are the sap which ascends 
within, and which is necessaiy to give beauty to the 
foliao-e and health and harmony to the whole devel- 
opment. All the colors of the rainbow, which are 
painted on the clouds, are necessary to the perfect 
light of day — so every light of knowledge is required 
in the perfect illumination of the mind. 

It is the special function of mathematical studies, 
to cultivate the faculty of abstraction and the habit 
of intense and continued attention — to establish in 
the mind a self-centering power that shaU subordinate 
all the intellectual faculties to the control of the will 



ME. DAVIES ADDEESS. 



1-49 



— to create, as it were, a governor of fhe intellectual 
machinery, that will give harmony and nniformity 
to all its motions. As an elementary formula of 
logic, it is the most simple and perfect. As a drill, 
in the structure and use of language, in its primary 
forms, no exercise insures greater precision in the use 
of words, or imparts to the mind as certain rela- 
tions between the signs and the things signified. In 
its higher branches, it is even an aid in the study of 
theology ; for it constantly raises the mind to the con- 
templation of the Unchangeable and the Infinite. 
Mathematics, therefore, is an aid and auxiliary in 
every other branch of study. It may be pursued 
too exclusively — ^the mind may become too much 
absorbed by its machinery and formulas ; but this 
danger is common to the study of every other sub- 
ject. A life spent exclusively on the Greek Gram- 
mar would not make a Greek scholar ; nor can the 
wide field of deductive reasoning be explored by 
repeating the formulas of the dictum and syllogism. 

Concurring fully in what was said, in the opening 
addi'ess, concerning the great value of the study of 
the Greek and Latin languages, and also in the 
merited eulos^ium of the manner in which these Ian- 
guages are taught in this institution, I may yet be 
permitted to say, that there is another language far 
more comprehensive than either or both of them : 



150 ME. DA vies' ADDEESS. 

the language of matliematics, wMcIl embraces witliin 
its ample folds all the laws of tlie material universe. 
This language takes us back to the birth of matter, 
and measures and records every step which each 
planet has taken since it began to move. Yea, more : 
it is prophetic — it reveals all future motions, and 
indicates the precise places which all matter must 
occupy, at any given instant of future time. 

This is the language in which the practical astrono- 
mer studies the heavens. It is the telegraphic wu'e 
which has enabled him to communicate with every 
planet of our system — to measure its diameter, its 
specific gravity, the dimensions of its orbit, its times 
of revolution and its balancing power in the system 
of the universe. It is this language which has ena- 
bled him to bring the ring of Saturn into his own 
study, where he sees it face to face, and, as it were, 
touches the very particles of matter of which it is 
composed. 

This language has enabled the naturalist to trace 
the dominion of law over all matter endowed with 
life. The contemplation of the minute objects of 
creation may appear, at first sight, unworthy the 
labors of the highest genius — but it is quite otherwise. 
The turtle's egg^ the little gnat whose tiny wings vi- 
brate five hundred times in a second, and the entire 
solar system, are each an embodiment of a thought 



151 



of God. Whether we look through, the microscope 
or the telescope, we are equally instructed iu the 
wonders of creative power and universal law. 

But science is not all in all. It does not compass 
the final aim and ultimate end of our being. Though 
it reaches back to the time when God said "Let 
there be light and there was light," and forward to 
the time when " there shall be a new heaven and a 
new earth" — though it measures all space — though 
it explains all laws relating to matter and motion — 
though it transports us to the central point of the 
physical universe, whence we behold the heavenly 
hosts moving in celestial harmony : yet, when we 
approach that mysterious luie where the finite ter- 
minates and the infinite begins, new visions open to 
the mind — all science and human knowledge fade 
away like castellated clouds made brilliant by the 
setting sun — Faith then arises in supernal beauty, 
and, with veiled eyes and trembling voice, we con- 
fess, " In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God." 



INAUGURAL DISCOURSE 



CHARLES MURRAY NAIRNE, M. A., 



PEOFESSOE OF LITEEATUEE AND PHILOSOPHY, 



February, 1858. 



ADDRESS 



The subjects assigned to the Professor of Litera- 
ture and Philosophy in Cokimbia College are so multi- 
farious, that a notice of each in succession, no longer 
than a brief newspaper article, would occupy the whole 
time allotted to the present discourse. Within the 
narrow bounds to which I am necessarily limited, how 
much could a man say on the great topics of Universal 
Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Oratory, ^Esthetics, Psy- 
chology, Ethics, Ancient and Modern Literature, the 
History of Philosophy, and that finest of all the Fine 
Arts — the living representation of our thoughts and 
feelings, by the symbols and the music of our mother 
tongue ? I know no process of intellectual condensa- 
tion, by which an}^ adequate or interesting account 
of so many departments of learning could be laid 
before you, on such an occasion as this. Every one 
of them would, of itself, furnish materials sufficient 
to fill full that utmost limit of the American listener's 
patience — ^an hour. 

Were I to make a selection from the encyclopaedia 



156 ME. nairiste's addeess. 

of arts and sciences that I am appointed to teacli, 
and to group together those three kindred branches, 
Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric, however unpoj)ular 
my choice, from so great a variety, might seem, I 
doubt not that I could unfold to you such views of 
the human mind, in its operations of thought and 
expression, as would not fail to excite your curiosity, 
and command your attention. It would be my duty 
to show you that man is distinguished from the lower 
animals, and connected with the nature of angels and 
of God, by the reasoning faculty ; and that, in the use 
of this faculty, all mankind — ^from the child to the 
sage, from the barbarian to the philosopher — are 
doing precisely the same thing in the self-same way — 
namely, deducing conclusions from premises. The 
learned are conscious of the syllogistic process, and 
can reduce their reasonings to the syllogistic form ; 
the unlearned are unconscious of the process, and 
perform it naturally ; nevertheless the process is 
identical in both ; and its discovery is one of the 
noblest examples of generalization within the whole 
compass of human knowledge — quite as noble as the 
law of affinity, which, in fixed proportions, holds 
together the constituents of matter, or the law of 
gravitation, which links, by an invisible bond, the 
spheres of the celestial concave. 

I should further have to show you that, as language 



ME. naiene's address. 15 Y 

is tlie body of thought — the audible or visible sym- 
bolization of the unseen spirit's operations and states 
— and that as the process of thinking is human — 
common to, and characteristic of, the entire family of 
man — the propositions, in which thoughts are embo- 
died, must have the same essential form, and consist 
of the same elements, in every language under heaven. 
It would thus aj^pear that Grammar is not an art but 
a science — a department of the great science of mind, 
possessing deep interest as an intellectual study; 
and not merely a system of rules for the exercise of 
school-boys, and the prevention of slips of the tongue. 
It would appear that, while various nations employ 
various sounds to designate objects, actions, attributes, 
and relations, and have thus each a different lexico- 
graphy, the grammar, properly so called, of all lan- 
guages is, with the exception of a few idioms and 
peculiar arrangements in each, the very same ; and 
that it is, in fact, nearly as absurd to talk of Greek 
Grammar and Latin Grammar, English Grammar and 
French Grammar, as it would be to talk of Greek, 
Latin, English and French Logic — Greek, Latin, Eng- 
lish and French Chemistry. Logic is logic, and 
Chemistry, chemistry, in whatever tongue they are 
employed or expounded ; and so, also. Grammar is 
grammar — the science of the human speech — in Latin 
or in English, in Greek or in French, in Chinese or 



158 ME. 

in Choctaw. Wherever men speak — wherever the 
fxkpoires avOpcoTTOL exist — they must of necessity in- 
dicate objects, and, therefore, have nouns ; actions, 
and, therefore, have verbs; attributes, and, there- 
fore, have adjectives ; relations, and, therefore, have 
prefixes and suffixes separate or conjoined ; and 
the subject, predicate and copula must be used, as 
often as mankind have anything to speak of, and 
something to say concerning it. The distinctions of 
gender, number and comparison — of person, time, 
mode, and voice are not arbitrary, but determined 
by the nature of things. In short, the principles of 
grammatical science are universal and necessary ; and 
when the grammars of various languages are divested 
of the absurdities with which pedantry has overlaid 
them, it will be found that the difference between one 
tongue and another is simply a difference of vocabu- 
lary and arrangement — something to be mastered by 
the memory, rather than grasped by the under- 
standing — something that can not be reduced to law, 
unless we receive as philosophy the hypothesis that 
certain vocal elements are the natural and universal 
representatives of certain ideas. 

I should still further have to show you that, as 
reasoning and speech are essential attributes of hu- 
manity, so, in the use of these for the purposes of 
convincing and persuading, the same methods of in- 



MR. nairne's address. 159 

veutiug arguments, and the same ways of arranging 
and applying them, are common to every speaker 
under the sun — to all nations, and kindreds and 
peoples and tongues — to the Indian chief who ha- 
rangues his tribe, the diplomatist who negotiates 
treaties, the legislator who evokes the applause of 
senates, and the minister of religion who commends 
salvation to dying men. Real Rhetoric is no conven- 
tional mode of dressing up Truth — no mere fashion, 
changing from year to year, and varying capriciously 
from beauty to deformity ; but a genuine, legitimate 
Art, founded on universal and immutable principles. 
It is an art, indeed, to which genius sometimes may 
attain almost sjDontaneously, as Homer and Shake- 
speare did in poetry ; nevertheless, like poetry, it has 
its conditioning laws which the philosopher investi- 
gates with pleasure, and which even genius may 
study with advantage. For genius is no lawless, 
wayward power. Its own insight discerns the ide- 
als of truth and beauty, and these it publishes to 
mankind in its own practice. It is the image and 
vicegerent of Eternal Wisdom, proclaiming the law 
of Heaven to others, while itself yielding to it a free 
and loyal obedience. 

Or again, quitting abstruse discussion, and choosing 
a more attractive flower from my garland, I might 



160 



entertain you witli tlie history and principles of Ora- 
tory. Were I to make this selection, it would be my 
task to describe those mighty masters of eloquence 
to whose fervid speech the hearts of men have thrill- 
ed, and by whom a power was wielded to shape the 
destinies of nations and the world. I should tell you 
of Nestor and Ulysses as they utter melodious fascina- 
tion in the verse of Homer ; of Demosthenes, who 

" fulmined over Greece 
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne ;" 

of Tully, who transformed Athenian vehemence and 
splendor into Koman stateliness and majesty ; of One 
far greater still, who, sitting on the mountain side, or 
by the crowded shore, proclaimed as man never spake, 
and with a celestial dignity beyond the loftiest repose 
of art, the sublime revelations of life and immortal- 
ity ; and hastening down the stream of time I should 
glance, as I passed, at the famous preachers and dis- 
putants — the Augustines, and Chrysostoms, and Abe- 
lards — of the middle ages, till, having crossed the 
abyss that divides the ancient world from the modern, 
I should group before you, in their various characters, 
the most distinguished orators who have flourished 
since the birth of the Keformation — Luther and 
Knox, with their rugged impetuosity; the more 
courtly and classic rhetoricians of the Anglican and 



ME. naiene's addeess. 161 

Galilean cliurclies, and tlie stern conscience-searchers 
of tlie Puritan meeting-house ; the fiery invective of 
Chatham, and the magnificence of his indomitable 
son ; the glory of Fox, the splendor of Sheridan, and 
the philosophic gorgeousness of Burke ; the forensic 
brilliancy of ErsMne, Curran, and Scarlett; the en- 
ergetic elegance of Canning, and the dark strength 
of Brougham ; the fearless simplicity of Henry, the 
logical massiveness of Webster, the prophetic rapture 
of Edward Irving, and the overwhelming intensity of 
Chalmers. 

And when I passed from the distinguishing char- 
acteristics of these and other great masters in ora- 
tory, to the nature of eloquence itself, I should show 
you that the grand secret of power in them all was 
naturalness and earnestness ; and that the attributes 
which peculiarly belonged to the worthiest of them, 
were resolute honesty, strong love of man, and a 
heart-felt adoration of truth. 

Or again, if, omitting the laws of reason and speech, 
and the practical use of these laws by the orator in 
convincing and persuading his fellows, I were to se- 
lect from my repertory the subject of ^Esthetics, or 
the Philosophy of Taste, it would be my endeavor to 
display before you that beauty which clothes all Na- 
ture as with a vesture of light, and has its source and 
11 



162 MK. wairne's addeess. 

centre in tlie Eternal, wlio dwells amid light tliat is 
inaccessible and full of glory ; and to investigate that 
susceptibility, unpossessed by the brute — whose eye 
conveys no sense of loveliness from the loveliest land- 
scape — ^but bestowed on human beings, and regaling 
theii' souls with all those delights of shape and sound, 
of motion and melody, which reflect, in Creation, the 
ineffable aspect of the Infinitely Beautiful. Nor 
would my essay be complete, till, in addition to the 
objective beauty of God and His works, and the sub- 
jective human sensibihty that thrills to it, I should 
speak of those immortal creations, wherein the genius 
of poet, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and 
orator, has enshrined the divine loveliness and sub- 
limity of the universe ; and show you how the spirit 
of every one of them, either consciously or unconsci- 
ously, held high converse with Him who, from the 
beauty of His holiness, sheds over heaven a bright- 
ness above the brightness of the sun. 

There is what may be termed a language of 
form, expressed m figure and tone, addressing itself 
intelligibly to the reason, and exciting in the heart 
emotions corresponding to every sentiment of rational 
beings. Man, as rational, has the capacity to under- 
stand this language, and, therefore, it is, to a certain 
extent, known and read of all men ; but the language 
of form must be studied in order to be fully compre- 



ME. naiene's address. 163 

hended, and the susceptibility must be cultivated, in 
order to receive alltlie enjoyment which the language 
is fitted to awaken. From the intercourse that we 
are compelled to hold with our fellow-mortals, we 
learn first to interpret the symbols of beauty in the 
lineaments of the human countenance, and in the ac- 
cents of the human tongue. That mysterious thing 
which we call expression is evidently conveyed by 
mere shape and sound ; and, to become sensible 
of the wonderful adaptation of these to represent 
every shade of sentiment, we have only to consider 
how shght are the modifications of outline which 
will alter the whole expression of one's face, and the 
changes of tone which will represent joy or sorrow, 
cheerfulness or solemnity, hope or despondency. It 
is the same countenance that we see, and the same 
voice that we hear — the countenance and the voice 
of our familiar friend — not a feature or tone is unre- 
cognized; but complicated changes of form have 
taken place, which the reason instantaneously appre- 
hends, and to which the susceptibility instantaneously 
responds. The changes in point of quantity have 
been very small, but they have been sufficient to 
tell the story of one mind to another ; and to tell 
it with a rapidity and concentration to which the 
power of ordinary language is but feebleness. Now, 
from this one example we may learn the general ex- 



164 ME. naiene's addeess. 

pressiveness of shape and sound; and understand 
how the Divine Artist, in creation, or the human 
artist, in his chosen walk of paintmg, sculpture, music, 
or poetry, may convey to all rational beings, by out- 
line and measure, the ideal that exists in his own soul. 
In the course of our JEsthetical Education, the lan- 
guage of beauty becomes continually more pregnant 
to our intellect and more striking to our sensibility, 
till, at last, in the galleries of art, in the cathedral 
and the concert-room, or amid the scenery and har- 
monies of nature, the sentient spirit drinks in meaning 
and delight from all that surrounds it. The insight 
of reason reads the sentiment of every form. The 
statue, the picture, the tune, the landscape, are all 
inspired — and the mind catches the import of each 
" pecuharity of modulated tone and delineated figure. 
The utterance of human sentiment in sensible forms 
gives Beauty ; and when the disclosed sentiment is 
that of a superhuman spirit, and we stand awe-struck 
in the presence of an angel or a divinity, the Beauty 
rises proportionally, and elevates itself into the 
Sublime."^' 

Or yet again, were I attracted from all the 
rest of my themes by the charms of Literature, 
it would be my duty to characterize, in the first 

*Hickok'3 Pjschology. 



MR. nairne's address. 165 

place, tlie collective literature of nations, as embody- 
ing and exhibiting the peculiarities of national mind : — 
the primitive simplicity of the Hebrew chroniclers, 
and the unapproachable majesty of the Hebrew 
poets — the splendor, variety, and all but perfect 
beauty of Grecian genius, and the borrowed lus- 
tre of its Roman imitators — the half-christian, half- 
pagan imaginations of mediaeval Italy and Spain — 
the grandeur of English letters in the early vigor of 
their youth, when Shakespeare created, and Bacon 
philosophized, and Raleigh began the history of the 
world — ^the more artificially polished productions of 
the Gallic muse, which, crossing the channel as the 
missionaries of a less sturdy civilization, converted 
the English Miltons and Jeremy Taylors into Popes 
and Addisons, and the Scottish Knoxes and Buchan- 
ans into Robertsons and Blairs — the Teutonic revul- 
sion, which brought back the reign of originality and 
of power in Germany, and spread from thence to 
Britain and even into France herself — and last of all, 
that hybrid style of thought and writing, which the 
mixed population and rapid growth of our own coun- 
try have necessitated, and the elements of which have 
not yet become so blended and assimilated into a 
unity as to constitute a peculiar national literature. 
And then, passing from the broader distinctions of 
national genius to the mo;-e marked peculiarities of 



166 ME. naikne's addeess. 

individual autliors, it would be my happiness to ex- 
patiate in retrospect among tlie " departed spirits of 
tlie miglity dead" — of all whose names live in the 
page of history, and without whom History herself 
had never been — seeing that if the exploits of kings 
and heroes had remained nnchronicled by annalist 
and bard, they would all have been forgotton utterly, 
or only recalled, in dimness and in terror, by the 
ruins of ancient cities, 

" And mighty relics of gigantic bones," 

turned up by the peasant's plough from the battle- 
fields and burial-grounds of unrecorded generations. 

" Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 

Multi : sed omnes illacrimabiles 

Urguentur ignotique longa 

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro." 

Having thus dismissed, by little more than a mere 
mention of them, all the other topics belonging to 
my department, I come now to the noblest and most 
arduous of the whole — the philosophy of the True 
and the Grood. Were I to attempt presenting you 
with an outline of intellectual and ethical science, 
and a skeleton history of philosophy, extending from 
the remote era of Pythagoras, who first employed 
the term, through the various schools of Greece and 
Italy, down to the present time, the sketch would be 



MR. nairne's address. 167 

so meagre, imperfect and uninteresting, that it would 
give little satisfaction either to listeners or to speaker. 
Neither can I allow myself to enlarge, in general 
terms, on the importance of moral and metaphysical 
study, as dealing with the most momentous questions 
that can engage the mind of man, and investigating 
the foundations of all knowledge whatsoever. It 
is on the high places of philosophy that the skej)tic, 
the atheist, the pantheist, the materialist, and the 
spiritualist must be met and overthrown. Hence the 
value and the difficulty of the inquiries which 
philosophy embraces. But, instead of touching, ex- 
cept incidentally, on any of these inquiries, I deem 
it of far greater consequence at present to aver, mth 
as much publicity and emphasis as possible, that of 
all the professors in your College, it is most indis- 
pensable that he who occupies the chair of philoso- 
phy should be thoroughly sound in the faith of the 
Gospel ; for, in the name of science and under covert 
of her robe, he may teach, if so minded, the wildest 
and most pernicious doctrines. I desire, then, first of 
all to declare that, both from the constitution of my 
intellect and the impulses of my heart, I am com- 
pelled to believe that there is a God — a selt-conscious, 
personal, infinitely gracious Maker and Father of aU. 
The infinite is not opposed to the finite as light is to 
darkness, truth to falsehood, right to wrong, virtue to 



168 ME. naiewe's addeess. 

vice. The infinite embraces the finite, and the idea 
of the latter necessarily calls forth, as its correlative 
and complement, the idea of the former. My mind 
cannot survey the boundaries of the finite and con- 
ditioned without gazing awfully into the infinite that 
contains it, and reverentially toward the Absolute, of 
whom I myself am a feeble image. My soul is not 
satisfied — ^its natural craving is not filled — ^until it has 
passed the confines which mark off that which is 
limited within that which is limitless. Here am I 
placed " upon this bank and shoal of time" between 
two eternities — the denizen of a little isle amid an 
immeasurable ocean! My vision can reach but a 
brief space into the vast profound that environs me 
above and below, on the right hand and on the left ; 
and although my spirit, as it makes excursions into 
creation, can discern much that is good and great, fair 
and admirable, it is still perplexed and baffled in its 
contemplations — " shadows, clouds and darkness rest" 
upon its views, till, from its own depths, like the sun 
from the nether hemisphere, springs the sublime dis- 
covery that there is a God ! 

In the stillness of a star-lit night, you may have 
cast your eyes over some fine landscape, and as you 
traced the glimmering circuit of the woods, and 
recognized the dark masses of the mountain-range, 
and saw the stars reflected in the river's bosom, and 



ME. nairne's address. 169 

descried the mansions, turreted and gray, or less 
picturesque and less hallowed by time, rising through 
the shade, and humanizing the whole scene with the 
interests and occupations of man — as you stood, 
gazing and musing, you have said within yourselves — 
"How fair would this prospect be were the round 
moon now pouring her lustre on river, and wood, and 
dwelling, and hill ; and how passing fair, when it lies 
glowing in the full sunshine that at once discloses 
and exalts its loveliness !" Nay, the very pleasure 
with which, even in the night, you behold it, is 
mainly owing to your recollection of its daylight 
glories, or of something similar ; and you can scarcely 
fancy the dim and dull impression it would make 
upon a being who could not fill up its proj^ortions 
from such recollection, and body forth its hidden 
features, in the exercise of an imagination which had 
been informed by the actual survey of the unveiled 
beauties of nature. It is even so with Creation when 
contemplated apart from a Creator ! It is even so 
with the present condition of things wlien regarded 
apart from a God of justice and goodness^ holiness 
and truth — tlie very God whom the Bible describes. 
Without a God, there lowers a most perplexing 
obscurity over the whole. I can discern beauties, 
but they are clouded ; harmonies, but, when I at- 
tempt to track them, they fade in the infinity of the 



170 ME. naiene's addeess. 

surrounding darkness ; design, but it is only frag- 
mentary, and not seldom apparently frustrated; 
operations, benevolent, and, to some extent, effectual, 
but often cruelly interfered with, and rendered dis- 
tractingly abortive ; something grand and graceful, it 
is true, but shadowy and evanescent, dreamy and 
dubious, without beginning and without end ; and I 
am puzzled to account for interruptions, and vacuities, 
and discrepancies, and disturbances, and feel intensely 
the need of some superior illumination to irradiate 
the entire field of view, and dispel the mystery — a 
mystery as much of confusion as of vastness — that 
broods over everything before me. Chains of causa- 
tion I can partially trace, but I discern no Omnipotent 
Hand from which they are suspended ; goodly fabrics 
of antecedent and consequent I can see, but no Kock 
of ages on which their foundations are laid ; motion I 
perceive, but no Prime Mover ; regularity, but no 
Regulator ; law, but no Law-giver ; life, but no 
Fountain of life ; scattered portions of truth, but no 
great Being who is the substance of truth — in whom 
all truth centres, and of whose nature all truth is only 
the disclosure and the outward expression ! Noiv^ 
the master-lcey to the %ohole of this mystery is the 
existence of a Supreme Creator and JRuler. The forth- 
flashing of this grand fact is the dayspring from on 
high, which, illuminating the Kosmos, brings to our 



MR. naiene's addeess. 171 

view its order and dependence — its origin and its 
end ; enables ns to walk surely, like tkose who walk 
at noon, instead of groping and peering like tkose 
who walk in darkness ; and gives rest to the soul's 
weary wings, by presenting an ultimate object where- 
on, in common with the entire universe, the exploring 
spirit reposes from its travel, and is satisfied. 

When I first look uip to the heavens, I behold 
nothing save an expanse of splendid confusion — a 
high o'erarching canopy ghttering with lights of 
sj^iritual brightness. Their distances are all the same 
to my vision, and they appear scattered over the 
mighty concave at random. No sound issues from 
the aerial dome — no living thing can be discerned 
walking amidst these lamps; and when they 
themselves are, at length, discovered to move, their 
march is tardy and without array ; for they fall not 
into ranks, and some of them seem to wander even 
from their own cu'cles. Amid the multiplicity of 
luminaries, there is still obscurity. The stars are still 
the stars of night. Whence are they, I ask, and what 
are they ? What is their nature and what their use ? 
Is the frame-work, in which they are inlaid, really a 
firmament — a substantial, resisting roof — and do they 
stud its surface merely to regale my eyes, and exer- 
cise my curious fancy ? I cannot tell ! 

As yet I cannot tell : but let me grasp the torch of 



112 ME. naiejste's address. 

science. The astronomer demonstrates tliat those 
lamps are orbs — probably worlds like our own ; that 
they revolve in paths of geometric symmetry, although 
so vast that the whole vault overhead is too limited 
a scroll to exhibit such a portion of those paths as 
would determine their figures to our sight ; and that, 
throughout all space, there prevails a law which gov- 
erns the huge globes wherewith its amplitudes are fill- 
ed, and, under this law, that which originally appears 
disorder is regularity, far more accurate and exquisite 
than that of the most ingenious and delicate of human 
contrivances. Now I begin to approach towards 
satisfaction. The firmament, I find, is not a soHd 
crystalline canopy; neither is there any longer dis- 
order among the starry train. My mind now cleaves 
the depths of space, and, to the glance of science, 
mechanism, stupendous both in magnitude and har- 
mony, is disclosed in its mighty and mysterious 
recesses. But after all I am not yet content. My 
spirit pants with the majesty of its own discoveries. 
I am confounded by the very grandeur which has 
been evoked. Amidst an illimitable universe I stand 
awe-struck and baffled, as if, too daring in my curios- 
ity, I had intruded, under guidance of a potent genius, 
into a region of sublimity where even he might fear 
to tread. Here it is, however, that the still small 
voice of my inmost reason is answered by the celestial 



MR. naiene's addeess. 173 

oracle of Revelation; and tlie two, blending into 
liarmony, proclaim — " God is, and God reigneth !" — 
Within the infinite domain where I had penetrated, 
they point me to a throne, and to a Sovereign seated 
thereon. The Almighty Maker and Mover is seen ! 
My wonder now becomes adoration ; my astonishment 
is exalted into reverence. The insecurity, the uncer- 
tainty, and the absence of cause, which oppressed my 
soul, are now gone. It no more falters amid unex- 
plained marvels. It has risen to the summit of truth, 
and from that empyreal height it sees, like a seraph 
on the battlements of Heaven, the whole creation 
roll beneath it, without shock and without confusion ! 
The light which the astronomer kindled was sufficient 
only to show the vastness of the prospect. Dimness 
and doubt still lay upon its illimitably receding 
depths. It was still the landscape without the sun. 
The God who said 

"Let Newton be," 

was still Himself to be revealed ; and then, but not 
till then, all became really hght; and the orbs of 
the sky were perceived to obey His voice, and their 
sj^lendor seen to be an irradiation from the " co-eter- 
nal beam of the Eternal" — ^the " light which no man 
can approach" — 

" Bright effluence of bright essence uncreate !" 



1*74 ME. naiene's address. 

It is tlius tliat tlie existence of a God forms the 
Key-stone of tlie entire structure of knowledge. His 
being is tlie grand truth, that, like the central sphere 
of our solar system, gathers all others around it, and 
harmonizes them all, and sheds light upon them all, 
and infuses life into them all ; and he, that would 
shut out this truth from his investigations, seems to 
me scarcely so wise as the man who should make his 
own chamber his universe, and content himself with 
examining its paltry appointments by the glimmer of 
his own taper, while he jealously excluded every ray 
coming from the fair and illuminated world beyond 
its walls. 

The Bible tells us that, before man was made, the 
earth was replenished with every green and every 
breathing thing. The garden was planted and wa- 
tered, and it teemed with life and beauty. Streams 
sparkled in the sun, breezes whispered in the shade, 
fruits glowed upon the boughs, flowers enameled 
the sward and opened their fragrant bosoms to the 
day, birds warbled among the bowers of Eden, 
beasts sported on its glades, and all creation awaited 
the advent of creation's lord, whose immortal mind 
was capable of ruling it, and appreciating the proofs 
of wisdom, power, and goodness which, though ex- 
isting in their own frames and functions, the creatures 
themselves w^ere unable to comprehend. And surely 



ME. nairne's addeess. 1T5 

it is no vain or improbable imagination to fancy tlie 
first man picturing to himself, liow nnfinislied and un- 
satisfactory would have been the curious work before 
him, had he who was its crown and glory not been 
produced, and invested with dominion over it. We 
can still further fancy his procedure, as, in the exer- 
cise of his newly-awakened consciousness, he must 
have inquired into the secret of his own being — 
gazing for a while on external things, and then turn- 
ing to his own body, perusing his own limbs, trying 
his own powers, and, when he found all so fitly and 
surprisingly made, questioning the creatures already 
formed, as if they, with thought and speech like his 
own, could tell him whence and what he was, and 
conjecturing, in the fullness of his doubt and wonder, 
what all the enchantment about him could mean, till, 
amid his delight and perplexity, he at length hears and 
knows the voice of God, and, bending with instinct- 
ive reverence before His presence, learns from the Di- 
vine utterance the mystery of his own existence and 
destiny, and the explanation of the manifold other 
existences that encompassed him on every side. Such 
an incident as this would come upon him with all the 
cheerfulness and certainty of light. His undefined 
desires it would both bring to shape and satisfy, and, 
like the discovery of any other great principle, it 
would reduce to order, and clearness, and unity, that 



1*76 ME. naiene's addeess. 

wMcli, without it, or sometliing equivalent to it, 
would liave forever remained to him a problem 
incapable of solution. 

Now, this stroke of Milton's imagination, wMch I 
have adapted to my present purpose, is not produced 
as a fact, but as an illustration. It is most eminently- 
natural. To be sure, there is none of us in circum- 
stances similar to those of Adam with reference to 
the knowledge and theory of creation. The existence 
of a Creator and Supreme Kuler is part of our earliest 
and most familiar behef ; and thus it is that we are 
under the necessity of making a strong effort to ap- 
preciate the sudden and self-evidencing power of a 
discovery like that which we suppose to have been 
made to him. Nevertheless, on making such an 
effort, the result will be powerfully felt, and we shall 
perceive that, in order to give unity, consistency, and 
intelligibility to the universe, both in its physical 
relations and in its moral aspects, we are compelled 
to admit the being of a God. It is the principle of 
affinity which gives unity to Chemistry — of gravita- 
tion which gives unity to Astronomy — of conscience 
which gives unity to Ethics — of propitiation which 
gives unity to Christianity — of life which gives unity 
to animals — of personality which gives unity to the 
human being; — and, in like manner, the universe 
is not felt to be One — seems not a Kosmos, but a 



HI 



stupendous puzzle, until reason starts, and Revelation 
confirms, that greatest of all truths, that God is, and 
that God reigneth — the Maker, Mover, and Father 
of all. 

In the second place, I seize this public and appro- 
priate opportunity of declaring that, from no superfi- 
cial study of its evidences both historical and internal, 
I am steadfast in the belief that the Bible is the word 
of God — that the insj)iration of the sacred writers is 
no mere theoloaiical name for the intuitions of 
human genius — that "thus saith the Lord" means 
literally and simply " thus saith the Lord" — and that, 
with the trifling exception of accidental mistakes 
common to all books that have been multiplied by 
transcription, the Holy Scriptures contain truth with- 
out mixture of error. I am fully aware that the 
Bible was not given to instruct men in science and 
philosophy, and that its language is the language of 
the people, not of sages and savans. I am further 
most fully aware that we are now in possession of a 
critical apparatus — a method of interpreting ancient 
writings — which implies not only a grammatical famil- 
iarity with their dialect, but likewise a historical fa- 
miliarity with the speculative opinions and modes of 
thinking, common to the age and country in which the 
writers of them lived. And I am still further aware 

12 



178 



tliat tlie researclies of travelers and antiquaries, and 
tlie labors of scientific men — astronomers, geograph- 
ers, geologists, naturalists, metaphysicians, ethnologists, 
and even chemists — ^have cast light on many portions 
of Scripture, and enabled critics to improve the iater- 
pretation of them, so that apparent discrepancies 
between science and revelation have been reconciled, 
and those things which, at first, were difficulties, have 
actually become demonstrations. Of all these facts I 
am most fully aware ; and, in view of them all, I affirm 
that were my investigations in philosophy to land me 
in a result that is clearly at variance with the well- 
ascertained import of the Divine Word, I would stop 
short instantly, assured that I was either wrong in 
my philosophical principles, or faulty in my logical 
deductions ; and I would earnestly retrace my steps, 
and search dihgently till I had found where my error 
lay. Others may call this timidity — or even bigotry 
— ^if they choose. I call it reverential caution ; and 
I freely confess that I should neither have the fool- 
hardiness to intrude anti-christian theories upon the 
undergraduates of a College, nor the dishonesty to 
retain a position, where I should be compelled to in- 
culcate doctrines which I did not most firmly believe. 
According to my view — which is also that of St. 
Paul — and, therefore, the correct one — the grand 
central idea of the Gospel is atonement by sacri- 



MR. :naiene's addeess. 1*79 

» 

iice. Now, it is certain tliat the great "mystery 
of godliness — God manifest in tlie flesli," is altogether 
beyond the ken of human philosophy. German 
rationalists and their disciples may tell me that every 
man is an incarnation of Divinity, and their words, 
when they so speak, may not be destitute of mean- 
ing ; but of this I am very sure, that they do not 
mean what St. John says, when he announces that 
the " Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." 
This truth is a matter of pure revelation. Neverthe- 
less, although our philosophy could never have solved 
the divine problem for which the Word became in- 
carnate — how shall God be just, and yet the justifier 
of sinners ? — philosophy assuredly does point us, with 
no uncertain indication, to the necessity of a Redeem- 
er, and hints not obscurely that our Redeemer must 
be Almighty. A short demonstration of these facts 
will terminate the present address, and show, in a 
sufficiently intelligible way, how philosophical investi- 
gation may be applied to questions of the highest 
practical moment. 

The knowledge and the power of man being both 
limited, he may not be able, in the first place, to form 
a perfect conception of an end which he desii-es to 
accomplish; and, in the second place, he may not 
have sufficient skill to devise and adapt the means 
whereby it may be accomplished perfectly. His con- 



180 ME. naiene's addeess. 

trivances may be faulty, either by excess or by defect. 
The material chosen may not be the most suitable, 
and it may be improperly distributed. There may 
be a superfluity of strength in one part, and a 
deficiency in another, and the application of his 
machinery may, and in fact generally does, admit 
of improvement. In short, his advances towards per- 
fection are necessarily tentative and experimental. 
He does not produce it at once by intuition or in- 
stinct, as the bee constructs its cells and the bird its 
nest. And as it is with man's material contrivances, 
so also it is with his schemes of moral and intellect- 
ual mechanism. In government, in education, and in 
philanthropic enterprise, he proceeds by trial and 
error, and does not arrive at the best plan till after 
many a failure and many an alteration. 

But God, on the contrary, being infinite in wisdom 
and infinite in power, knows at once the very end He 
would gain, and the very means that are requisite to 
gain it. This is an obvious deduction from the very 
notion of Godhead. And the truth, thus emanat- 
ing from a source a priori^ is exemplified in all the 
contrivances and arrangements of the universe. In 
God's works there is neither defect nor superfluity. 
The power employed is most precisely proportioned 
and adapted to the work that is to be done. If the 
whale, for instance, requires to dive to depths in the 



181 



ocean where the pressure would be destructive to 
other creatures, it is made strong in proportion to 
that pressure. If the eagle must soar heavenward, its 
bones and quills are made light, and if it must battle 
with the storm, they are likewise made strong. If 
the Tiahitat of a fish is the dark waters of the Mam- 
moth Cave, the creature is unprovided with eyes, but 
in the feline family, which seek their prey in the 
night-time, the organ of vision is capable of extraor- 
dinary enlai'gement. The tribes of the sea have no 
fountain of tears wherewith to lubricate the eye-ball, 
because they n«ed none ; but the dwellers on the land 
are furnished "with the necessary secretion. And so 
on, throughout all nature, there is nothing superfluous 
and nothing defective. In cases of human mechanism, 
where calculations, involving the profoundest mathe- 
matical principles, have been made to determine the 
exact medium between excess and defect, it has been 
found that the Creator had anticipated the solution 
of the difficulty. " During the latter part of the last 
century," — says Edgar Allan Poe — " the question 
arose among mathematicians, — ' to determine the best 
form that can be given to the sails of a wind-mill, 
according to their various distances from the revolv- 
ing vanes, and likewise from the centres of the revo- 
lution.' This is an excessively complex problem ; for 
it is, in other words, to find the best possible position 



182 ME. naieiste's addeess. 

at an infinity of varied distances, and at an infinity 
of points on the arm. There were a thousand futile 
attempts to answer the query, on the part of the most 
illustrious mathematicians; and when, at length, an 
undeniable solution was discovered, men found that 
the wings of a bird had given it with absolute pre- 
cision ever since the first bird had traversed the air." 
The cells of the honey-comb afford another and more 
familiar example of the same law. They are so con- 
structed as to give the utmost room that is compatible 
with the utmost stability and compactness. There is 
no loss of space and yet no diminution of strength."^ 

* As if to demonstrate the existence and rigid authority of this law in the 
most emphatic manner possible, we find it extended even to the region of the 
supernatural. The miracles of Scripture, although exceptional, as unusual 
exhibitions of Divine power, are not exceptional in respect of the law which 
we are now considering. First of all, no miracle is performed unless the 
occasion plainly justifies and demands it. The rule that Nature dictated to a 
heathen poet, and by which she guided his predecessors, is the actual rule of 
God in the testimony borne by Omnipotence to Truth — 

" Nee deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus." 

A needless miracle would be unworthy of Heaven, and incredible to enlight- 
ened men. But further, in the working of the miracle itself, all that can be 
done, by human power and ordinary means, is commanded to be done. If 
water is to be made wine, the water-pots are filled by the hands of men. It 
would have been as easy to create the wine at once, but, in that case, the law 
of nothing superfluous and nothing defective would have been violated. If 
the leper is to be cured, he must wash seven times in the waters of Jordan 
and be clean. If the withered hand is to be restored, the patient must him- 
self make an effort to stretch it forth. If dead Lazarus is to be raised, men 
must roll the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and when he comes forth 
bound hand and foot, they must unloose the grave clothes and let him go. 
Even in the two miracles of feeding the multitudes, the baskets of fragments 



ME. naiene's addeess. 183 

I am aware that there are some seeming excejDtions 
to the rule which I wish to demonstrate. For in- 
stance, the rain that would cheer the thirsty ground 
in a season of drought, and save the fruits of the 
earth for the use of man, may return from the clouds 
to the ocean, or fall upon the sterile sand ; wJiile at 
other times the labors of the husbandman may be 
deluged from on high, and his wealth swept away by 
the torrent that gathers among the hiUs. But that 
the rain is wasted even on the sea or the sand, would 
be far too much for us to affirm ; and no believer in 
Providence will find difficulty in rightly interpreting 
the variations and hazards that attend the cultivation 
of the soil. In fact, we know too little of mete- 
orology to decide what advantage may arise to the 
whole globe from the phenomena of the sky ; but we 
know enough of nature's works to be assured that 
every phenomenon must accord with the law for 
which I am now contending. 

Up to this point, however, I have said nothing of 

were not superfluous but intentional ; because, besides being gathered up for 
future use, they afforded the Saviour the very opportunity he sought and 
planned, of inculcating care and frugality that nothing might be lost. This les- 
son was, in fact, a Divine proclamation of the law in question — that in God's 
doings there is no deficiency and no redundancy. The same Being, who 
created food in the lonely place for his hearers, could have done so for himself 
when he hungered in the wilderness ; but the miracle was not needed, and, 
therefore, it was not performed. Thus the multiplying of the loaves and 
fishes, which, at first glance, appears to contradict our principle, really goes, 
to confirm it in every particular. 



184 ME. naikne's addeess. 

the proportion between the powers and the work of 
intellectual and moral beings. This, indeed, is the 
very question which we are required to determine. 
But the condition of man is ob^dously excluded from 
our argument : for it is upon man's condition as a con- 
clusion that the entire argument is intended to bear ; 
and except in so far as we can perceive, in the present 
state of humanity, indications of primeval perfection, 
the whole of our inductive evidence must necessarily 
be analogical. 

Excluding man, then, the nearest approach to intel- 
ligence in terrestrial nature is the instinct of ani- 
mals ; and it was once my purpose to relieve the 
tedium of our present investigation by adducing illus- 
trations of the law now under discussion, from that 
interesting field of Natural History. Such a course, 
however, would prolong this address beyond all due 
bounds ; and I, therefore, content myself with a 
general statement of fact — that, while every instinct 
that is necessary for the comfort and preservation of 
brutes is bestowed upon them, they possess, in their 
natural condition, none that are superfluous. When 
any of them are domesticated by man, they are 
rendered so far artificial, and some of their original 
instincts may thus become useless. But in their wild 
state these instincts are indispensable. The dog, which 
now turns round several times before lying down to 



MR. nairne's address. 185 

sleep, is only practicing in domesticity tlie gyration 
by wliicli liis ancestors hollowed out their lairs in the 
wilderness. Hence we have the strong analogy of 
instinct to add to the evidence already adduced, that 
the powers of every creature are exactly proportioned 
to the work which that creature has to perform. 

Whether or not there are any spiritual beings 
between man and G^od is a question which mere philo- 
sophy does not enable us to decide. It is the general 
behef of the human race that there are such beings ; 
and the testimony of Scripture, which reveals the 
existence of Axigels as a matter of fact, coincides 
with this general belief A dogma of revelation, 
however, cannot be used as a link in any chain of 
purely philosophical argument. All the aid that we 
are entitled to claim from the Bible is the fact, that 
everything therein declared concerning the nature of 
Angels is in perfect accordance with the conclusions 
which I have already drawn from the attributes of 
God. These pure spirits are always represented as 
busy in the service of their Lord. They rest not day 
and night. Their devotion to God is entire ; and not 
a single hint is dropped to the effect that any of theu' 
power is ever kept back, or diverted, from the work 
that their Creator has assigned them. Their duty and 
their delight is to employ all then* faculties, at all times, 
and in all their available strength, in the service of 



186 ME. naiefe's addeess. 

Him from wliom these faculties were derived. There 
is not one circumstance in this representation wMcli 
Conflicts witli our notions of justice and propriety. 
Everything is exactly as we should judge it to be 
from the relation of spirits to the Father of Spirits. 
We feel assured that, if there really are spirit- 
ual creatures superior to ourselves, the law of their 
duty to Grod is precisely that which the Bible de- 
scribes. 

But though it would be illogical to pass, in an 
argument of this kind, from reason to revelation 
when reason fails us, it is manifestly lawful to rest 
upon well-attested historical facts, whether these are 
facts of Jewish or of Grentile history. Now, the ap- 
pearance and ministry of angels I hold to be his- 
torical facts. No candid critic can confound them 
with the fables of Greek and Roman mythology. I 
am, therefore, justified in assuming that the general 
belief of mankind on the question of superhuman 
spirits is correct ; and this being the case, my rational 
apprehension of Ethical relations assures me that 
their power and their duty are most scrupulously 
proportioned to each other, and that such of them as 
have not abused their spiritual liberty do fulfill their 
duty to the very letter. 

If, then, the law of exact correspondence and pro- 
portion between power and work extends over both 



ME. nairne's addeess. 187 

the highest and the lowest of God's creatures, it were 
most unreasonable to imagine that man, who stands 
between the brute and the angel — a compound of 
the animal and the spiritual — can be exempted from 
the rule that applies to the animal and the spiritual 
alike. When we find man doing other work than 
his God's, the rational inference is — ^not that his 
capacities of intelligence, feeling and will are insuf- 
ficient for the attainment of the end of his being — 
but that his original condition has undergone a 
change — that he has abused his moral freedom, and 
is a rebel against the law. Most unwarrantable it 
were to suppose that the law has been abrogated in 
his favor, or even in the smallest degree relaxed. 
The existence of the law is manifest ; its foundation 
lies in the relation of creature to Creator, from which 
relation the creature, man, can claim no exemj)tion ; 
and what can be more reasonable than the employ- 
ment of God's own gifts in God's own service, and in 
nothing else ? The law, indeed, is not only reason- 
able but supremely benevolent ; for the only solid 
happiness* lies in strict obedience to its commands. 
Bu*d, beast, reptile, fish and insect are all happy in 
the exercise of their instincts, and the use of theii* 
powers. To do the bidding of the Most High con- 
stitutes the blessedness of angels. And every human 
being, who has abandoned his rebellion and returned 



188 ME. nairne's address. 

to his allegiance, is forward to proclaim tliat lie never 
knew substantial enjoyment till now.* 

We thus find that the conclusion for which I have 
been contending is supported both by considerations 
a priori^ and by examples drawn from every region 
of nature; and we are abundantly warranted in 
affirming that every creature has a work to do for 
his Creator, and that his Creator has furnished him 
with powers precisely proportioned and adapted to 
that work. The work does not exceed the powers, 
and the power is not greater than the work. It is 
thus manifestly impossible that a creature can ever 
do more than his duty to God; and consequently, in 



* The aphorism of the Great Teacher is at once natural and true : "Unto 
whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required." The whole law 
of the creature lies in this Divine announcement ; and it is fully illustrated in 
the parables of the talents and pounds, and of the wise and foolish virgins. 
I cite another passage of Scripture to the same effect. It is this : " Whether 
ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." The precept 
is quite general. All that we do, even to the most common and necessary 
actions, is to be done — not unto ourselves, nor to any other creature — but to 
the glory of Him who made us. I need not, therefore, dwell on that aspect 
of the command. I prefer to inquire what is meant by eating and drinking 
to God's glory. Manifestly, not that which some suppose— namely, eating 
and drinking with thankful hearts. Doubtless, gratitude to Providence for our 
daily bread is a good thing, and a duty; but I cannot believe that that idea 
exhausts the significance of an expression so remarkable as the one in ques- 
tion. The real and full meaning of the passage is clearly this : that, in the 
matter of eating and drinking, we are bound to eat and drink of such things, 
and in such quantities, and at such times, as wiU maintain our powers, both 
mental and bodily, in the highest possible state of efficiency and endurance, 
for the service of our Lord and Master. Excess, on the one hand, and absti- 
nence, on the other, are equally derelictions of duty, unless some absolute 
necessity, or some higher duty, intervenes to modify our practice. 



MR. naiene's address. 189 

case of failure, lie can make absolutely no compensa- 
tion — ^in case of arrearage, future payment is utterly 
beyond his own ability. Any accumulation of crea- 
ture merit is an obvious absurdity ; and so tbere 
never can be a surplus to atone for a single moment's 
idleness, or a single moment's relaxation beyond tliat 
rest whicli may be really required by tlie creature's 
constitution. If the faculties of an angel are nobler 
than those of a man, the angel has a more arduous 
task to perform ; and both man and angel are bound, 
by the relation of creature to Creator, to employ con- 
tinually their whole available power in their Crea- 
tor's service. And more than this, they are also 
bound to take good care that no abuse of any sort — 
neither of improper exertion, nor of sensual indul- 
gence — shall diminish their power, on the one hand, 
and that no exercise shall be neglected, on the other, 
which may increase its efficiency, according to the 
appointed law of such mcrease. There is no allow- 
ance for indolence, or carelessness, or n-regular activ- 
ity ; far less for positive perversion. Should the duty 
of any man ever call for over-exertion, and conse- 
quent destruction of power, the sacrifice is required 
by his present abnormal condition. In a perfect state 
no such demand can be made ; for no such sacrifice 
can be necessary. 

Now, keeping fully in mind what I have thus 



190 ME. naieiste's addeess. 

demonstrated respecting the duty of man, and tlie 
relation of his original power to that duty, let me 
attempt the proof of a second proposition, which, 
after its establishment, I shall ask you to connect with 
the first, so as to draw a conclusion from a compari- 
son of the two. 

My second proposition is the following: The 
scheme of God in creation and providence is progress- 
ive : not in the sense of proceeding by trial and 
error, as the schemes of men do ; but in the sense of 
proceeding from perfection to further perfection. 

If you reflect on the connection of cause and effect, 
as exhibited in the universe, you will find that no 
cause is followed by one effect only. There may, 
indeed, be, and there usually is, one effect of which 
the given cause is more particularly the antecedent ; 
but, in addition to this prominent effect, there are also 
minor and collateral effects which must be ascribed 
to the san;ie cause ; and each of these effects becomes, 
in its turn, a cause destined to produce so many sepa- 
rate series of new effects, and so on ad infinitum. 
The propagation of effects is thus like the propagation 
of a race of animals or vegetables from a parent 
stock. In fact, the indefinite propagation of organ- 
ized creatures is just an instance of that causal pro- 
gression whereof I am now speaking. Perpetual pro- 
gress is, therefore, a necessary result of the great law 



ME. nairne's addeess. 191 

of cause and eJffect. From tlie Almighty First Cause, 
as from the centre of power, streams of causation are 
forever radiating, and forever widening, in a multi- 
plied efficiency, towards the outer regions of unlim- 
ited space, and through the endless ages of infinite 
time. 

But I will not rest the demonstration of our second 
proposition, any more than I did that of our first, 
upon mere a priori considerations. It will be more 
interesting to you, and quite as much to our present 
purpose, if I can lead you, by a brief induction of 
particular cases, to a satisfactory establishment of the 
general law. 

From an examination of the rocks which compose 
the crust of our earth, and the organic remains that 
are therein imbedded, we find that this world has 
undergone a succession of wonderful changes, in 
which creation after creation, each perfect in its kind, 
has been destroyed, and by which the globe has been 
gradually prepared for the comfortable habitation of 
the human race. The geological history of the earth 
is one of the sublimest retrospects that scientific re- 
search affords. Through the mighty and mysterious 
ages of the past, mortal and irrational creatures have 
been employed as the precursors and pioneers of the 
rational and immortal, and we believe that, after one 
change more, all of the latter that has become liable 



192 ME. naiene's addeess. 

to death sliall be re-endowed witli immortality, and 
not a bone of man shall continue in the dust. The 
ground shall give up its human dead — not in frag- 
ments and fossils for the instruction of superior 
beings — ^but living, and to live forever, iii their 
renovated abode. 

Again— rising from the earth to the heavens, we dis- 
cover there appearances which go to prove that there 
is a similar creative progression in other worlds besides 
our own. There seems sufficient truth in the nebular 
hypothesis, to warrant the conclusion that the realms 
of space contain systems in all stages of formation, 
from the most chaotic and rudimentary, up to those 
which we are wont to call perfect. Creation nowhere 
springs at once to the highest beauty, but unfolds its 
glories by degrees. The eternal Maker lays his com- 
mands on matter, and He, to whom a thousand years 
are as one day, guides it obediently, through count- 
less ages, to its destined end. 

Returning to our own earth, we there perceive the 
same law of progress in detail, which we have already 
observed in the general. The life force in animals 
and vegetables builds up bodies for them by a gradual 
process of assimilation and growth, and matures in 
them the germs of future generations ; so that from 
one tree may spring a forest, and from one pair the 
population of a planet ; and in the higher region of 



ME. naiene's addeess. 193 

human personality, the intellectual, aesthetical, and 
moral powers work out, by continued effort, the ad- 
vancement of science, and art, and liberty. In spite 
of reverses and vicissitudes, and transmigrations from 
one country to another, civilization, and knowledge, 
and government are perpetually moving forward, on 
the whole. "Antiquitas seculi, juventas mundi." The 
human family — as a family — are not only older, but 
wiser, and better, and happier now than ever they 
were since first they peopled the earth. The com- 
parative barbarism, that has overrun some ancient 
fields of refinement, is more than compensated by the 
higher culture of others, and by the gladness of many 
a primeval wilderness that has been made to rejoice 
and blossom as the rose. 

On the whole, then, and not to weary you by fur- 
ther induction, I venture to affirm that progress from^ 
one degree of perfection to another is a law which 
the Almighty has been pleased to enact for His own 
operations, and for the continued felicity of His ra- 
tional and responsible creatures. Of the j)rogres- 
sion that is visible in material things, I need say 
nothing more. The notice of it was necessary only 
to fortify our second proposition, as I did the first, 
by analogy. I crave your particular attention to the 
progress of the intellectual and moral universe, and 
to the fact, that the very nature and necessities of 

13 



194 ME. naiene's addeess. 

sj)iritual creatures compel us to Ibelieve, tliat tlie same 
increase of power and enjoyment wMcli we discern 
in tlie human race is also a law to every rational and 
accountable subject of tlie King of kings. We know 
enough of our own souls to feel assured that, were it 
not for the perishable bodies wherein they dwell, 
their capacity of improvement is indefinite ; and con- 
sequently, in the case of pure spirits, there can be no 
limit to the accumulating strength acquired by per- 
petual exercise. 

Let us now connect our two propositions, and see 
what conclusion will result from them. 

Every creature has a work to perform, and power 
enough, but not more than enough, to perform it. 
As the power increases by continued exercise, the 
work increases in exact proportion. The ratio of the 
two is always a ratio of equality. We have thus, in 
the universe of God, a perpetually augmenting power 
and a perpetually augmenting work — a continued 
progress which will never have an end — a vast pro- 
cession of intelligence and virtue, ever mounting and 
ever hastening towards loftier heights of knowledge, 
righteousness, and holiness. Should any creature, or 
any company, in that universal march, stop short in 
the exercise of their faculties — sit down indolently 
by the way, or absolutely commence to struggle back- 
ward against the advancuig host — ^thus wasting their 



MR. naiene's address. 195 

strengtli in vain perversity, tell me, I pray yon, wliat 
consequences would follow ? The grand procession 
liurries on with, ever-growing power and speed. The 
loiterers and mutineers are left behind, losing vigor, 
both of intellect and will, every moment of their 
stay. The distance between them and their former 
fellows is ever, ever widening, while their own capa- 
cities for good are ever, ever diminishing. Their 
perdition is deepening by a double acceleration. The 
case is clearly a hopeless one — ^hopeless, most hope- 
less — unless God himself can open up an avenue of 
hope! 

Turn aside with me, therefore, and gaze on this 
great sight — ^this wondrous procession of angel and 
archangel, cherubim and seraphim ! Onward and 
upward tread incessantly these unfallen sons of 
God ! Faihng in no duty since they first were made, 
they have ever been mounting from glory to glory, 
and from strength to strength. Their intelligence 
has been perpetually expanding, and their knowledge 
has been perpetually augmenting. Their affections 
have been continually deej^ening, and fresh objects of 
affection have been continually supplied as their ca- 
pacities enlarged. Their moral sense has been always 
acquiring new vigor, their will has been always grow- 
ing more resolute, and their lapse into disobedience 
has been evermore becoming less and less possible. 



196 ME. naiene's addeess. 

It is a marvelous panorama that we liave now before 
ns ! Not the sons of Genius, struggling upwards, 
with panting breath and many a slip, to some mythic 
immortality on the heights of Olympus or of Heh- 
con — not these, but the sons of Almighty Grod, bright 
with eternal youth, and strong with ever-growing 
strength — ^tasked to the full, but never overstrained — 
exultant in their ascent as the eagle in its flight — 
marching up the highway to the heaven of heavens, 
while the splendors of the holy place cast on their 
path a brighter glory than the sunshine, and the 
chorus of triumph swells from rear to van of the 
magnificent procession ! Not the stars of heaven — 
not suns, with their planetary trains, sweeping on- 
ward through sj>ace — not galaxies rushing in cycles 
that baffle computation, yet still returning whence 
they came as the appointed ages roll away — ^not 
these grand orbs, but spirits immortal, each more 
precious than a thousand stars, advancing forever 
and forever towards that Sanctuary where sitteth 
the Father of Spirits — "high-throned above all 
height" — unapproachable, yet "altogether lovely," 
and still disclosing new beauties to His children as 
they rise ! 

But where is man in this majestic progress — ^what 
place holds he in the universal host ? He, too, was 
destined to a post in the procession, and, though the 



ME. nairne's address. 197 

last of God's cliildren, was not the least in His regard. 
Angels would not have disdained his company, nor 
would his voice of joy have been discordant with 
their song. He, no less than they, would have pro- 
ceeded from perfection to perfection — his capacity, 
like theirs, forever growing and forever full ! But 
man is confessedly a deserter from the army of the. 
Lord of Hosts. The most orthodox believer bears 
no stronger testimony to this fact, than does the zeal- 
ous reformer, who frequently would comjoensate for 
the scantiness of his creed by the extent of his phi- 
lanthropy. Forsaking the ranks of Heaven, and in 
league with the rebellious, man has met the fate of 
the dupe in his apostacy. He now strays and strug- 
gles in the wilderness — struggles with its entangle- 
ments, seeks a home in its spots of transient verdure, 
and strays further and further from the way of hfe. 
His faculties have been perverted, his affections have 
been misplaced, and his will has been depraved. 
Sloth has enervated him, passion has wasted his vigor, 
and he either sits down or retrogrades, while the 
universe hastens on ! The interval between where he 
is and where he ought to be is perpetually lengthen- 
ing, and the cumulative power, that was due to his 
continued exercise in holiness, is irrevocably gone. 
Never, even though he desired it, can he overtake 
his former companions ; neither, though he could over- 



198 ME. naiene's addeess. 

take them, lias lie now tlie strengtli to keep pace witli 
tliem in their accelerating march. They are now 
stronger than they were, and he, to all true good, is 
weaker. Desolate and helpless as Israel in the House 
of Bondage — desolate and helpless as the captives 
who hung their harps upon the willows, and wept by 
the rivers of Babylon — desolate and helpless as the 
daughter of Zion bowing in sorrow beneath the palm- 
tree — desolate and helpless as the j^rodigal who, far 
from love and home, would fain have fed on unclean 
husks — desolate and helpless as these, he sits him 
down — and who shall bear him across the space that 
intervenes between him and the post he should have 
held — who shall replace the strength that he has 
squandered in iniquity, and supply the power that he 
ought to have gained in the practice of righteousness ? 
Manifestly,, not himself; for at no period had he more 
power than he needed, and noiv he has far less. 
Manifestly, not an angel, nor an army of angels, for, 
though they may pity the apostate, they have no 
power to spare. Manifestly, no created thing — ^mani- 
festly, none but the Omnipotent — none but One who 
is absolute and independent — One who can interpose, 
with the fullness of underived and unclaimed might, 
to seek and to save the ruined. 

"How charming is divine Philosophy!" How 



]\iE. naiene's addeess. 199 

charming at all times, but especially how charming 
when she thus leads us to the portals of Divine Reve- 
lation, and the response of the Holy Oracle harmo- 
nizes with the voice of Reason ! There really is an 
Almighty Redeemer — ^an Omnipotent One that lays 
hold on wretched man, and bears him to where he 
should have been in the universal march ; and who, 
from the riches of His grace, can furnish more than 
all the energy that man has lost ! " Who is this that 
cometh from Edom ; with dyed garments from Boz- 
rah ? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in 
the greatness of his strength?" It is I — "I that 
speak in righteousness, mighty to save." 

From the hour that this Deliverer espoused our 
cause, the door of hope was opened, and the free 
favor of Heaven, descending to bless this blighted 
earth, prevented its degenerating into a pandemo- 
nium. Divine mercy, that heretofore might have been 
heard of by the hearing of the ear, but which no 
eye had yet seen in actual operation — this new attri- 
bute of Godhead, hke a new system in immensity, 
was disclosed to the admiration of angels and men. 
From that blessed hour, captive after captive began 
to be released. Death, the avenger, was made the 
herald of eternal life, and the gi^ave of the now 
mortal body become the gate of glory to the still 
immortal soul. From that hour, the noble work of 



200 



emancipation — emancipation to ligM and power as 
well as freedom — lias been going on; multitudes of 
tlie rescued have been welcomed to tlie celestial throng ; 
and we believe — for our natural expectation is un- 
quenchable, and the oracles of prophecy assure us — 
that a day of triumphant restoration is drawing 
nigh. It is written ! it is sealed in heaven ! and the 
fullness of time shall reveal it all ! And when the 
great day shall come at last, there shall be such a 
merry-making in the universe as has not been since 
of old the morning stars sang together; for the 
crowning act of a new and nobler creation shall have 
been brought to a close. The Celestial Host, whose 
glory lighted the plains of Bethlehem, and whose 
anthem echoed along its hills, shall again unfold their 
splendors and take up their song ; and Earth below, 
no longer mute as in the beginning, but vocal 
throughout all her realms, shall send back her joyous 
response to the gates of Paradise. The mountains 
shall break forth into singing ; the fields shall clap 
hands on every side ; the glorious strain shall ring in 
the harping of the woods; streams shall murmur 
praise as they flow ; and ocean shall uj)lift his music 
of many waters in concert with the quiring winds ; 
the stars shall peal notes of gratulation from their 
spheres ; the great sun shall roll through all his deep 
tones of rejoicing ; the ransomed themselves shall lead 



ME. nairne's addeess. 201 

the mighty jubilee with "blest voices uttering joy ;" 
while the vaulted sky, like a high temjole-roof, shall 
resound the glad chorus of a renovated world, and a 
race at length made free ! 



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